The wind continued to howl, with the yellow sands still obscuring the sky.
Song Heping roughly pried open Hunter's lips—cracked and crusted over with blood due to excessive bleeding and severe dehydration—and poured in the last bit of murky, rust-flavored water that was more precious than gold.
Hunter's body convulsed unconsciously, making a sound like a broken bellows struggling to swallow.
His head was held by bandages, which had long been stained a nauseating dark brown by seeping blood, pus, and sand.
"...Water... please..."
Seeing the water, a young soldier under General Haftar's command, who looked barely seventeen or eighteen, stared blankly, his lips cracked and bleeding. His sand-covered face was a deathlike gray and pallid; his voice was so weak it was almost completely swallowed by the roar of the sandstorm.
His fingers scratched unconsciously at the scorching sand.
"There is none left."
Song Heping didn't even glance at him, acting with a kind of ruthless decisiveness and efficiency that comes from being in an extreme environment.
He quickly tightened the cap of the empty military water bottle and stuffed it back into his belt.
He surveyed the ragtag remnants of the squad trudging through the apocalyptic sandstorm.
Everyone looked as if they had just crawled out from the swamp of hell, covered head to toe in thick yellow sand, trudging unsteadily, eyes blurred, sustained only by the last vestiges of survival instinct and remaining will.
At the back of the group, two soldiers were practically half-dragging, half-carrying General Haftar, who was already half-unconscious, into a windbreak.
The general's once-powerful uniform was now in tatters, stained with blood and sand, his graying beard tangled, and his breaths faint.
"Wrench! Direction!"
Song Heping shouted with all his strength, his voice shredded and dispersed by the fierce wind, barely audible a few meters away.
Wrench was clutching a violently shaking military GPS and compass to his chest with his back and arms.
His cheeks were swollen and cracked from the flying sand, and he squinted painfully, trying desperately to make out the screen.
"It seems... slightly... west! The wind is too strong! Magnetic interference... damn it! This damn thing's about to be clogged with sand, it won't last much longer!"
His voice was full of despair.
"Boss, we were diverted by 15 degrees in the sandstorm, we estimate after the storm passes, we have to walk another 10 kilometers..."
10 kilometers...
Under normal circumstances, it's just a long-distance cross-country trek.
But here and now, it means something entirely different.
In this dire situation, 10 kilometers could mean the annihilation of the entire crew.
At that moment, Disaster Star approached.
"Boss, in this situation, the water will definitely not be enough... Even if the sandstorm passes, I'm afraid..."
As he spoke, Disaster Star glanced around.
"We'll die before we even get there."
An hour later.
The huge claw of the sandstorm finally loosened.
The last gust of wind, filled with sharp sand, reluctantly howled across the jagged rocks above the windbreak. Song Heping blinked away the heavy sand from his eyelashes, surveying his disintegrating team.
Everyone was curled up in the cracks of rocks and sheltered areas.
Some were still retching unconsciously, expelling bile mixed with sand; others were completely limp, chests barely rising and falling, eyes vacantly staring at the dying sun; more simply sat or lay numbly, faces frozen in post-crisis survival yet deeply trapped in despair.
Thirst, like countless burning ants, gnawed at the last moisture deep in their throats, scorching their sanity.
In the silence, only the sounds of labored breathing remained, like a dilapidated bellows struggling to keep going.
"Disaster Star."
Song Heping's voice was as dry as sandpaper scraping.
He wiped his face and sand trickled down through his fingers, leaving dirty streaks on his face.
Disaster Star's eyes held a fatigue on the verge of collapse.
"Boss."
"How much water is left?"
Song Heping spat out each word with the weight of a thousand.
Disaster Star's Adam's apple moved with difficulty, as if that simple syllable had drained his last strength.
He silently unclasped a sand-covered, flattened canvas water bag from his waist, then pointed to another soldier nearby tightly holding the only relatively intact 10-liter plastic jerry can.
"Just this."
Disaster Star's voice was hoarse, carrying a sense of complete despair, "The canvas bag might have half a liter left, the can... at most ten liters. Over a hundred people..."
He shook his head, swallowing the rest of his words heavily.
The numbers alone had already pronounced the death sentence.
This amount of water, in the heart of the Sahara, was at best a fleeting comfort.