Desert Survival

The first evening breeze whisked about Charles' hair, making him shiver violently. He managed to open his eyes a bit, shielding them from the flurry of dust entrapping him. What he saw was unmistakable and unforgettable - miles and miles of grey dunes with silvery yellow awning from the moon. His stomach shrank from his throat as Charles swallowed.
Lifting his canteen, now feeling a lot lighter, he struggled to his feet. Leaning against a dune's apex covered from head to toe with the moon's silver chill, he remembered. A strained smile lifted his lips as he closed his eyes, and dozed off despite feeling as colder and more alone than ever before.
Charles had been with his garrison in Cairo before they were ambushed. In the confusion of the attack, he escaped unscathed, running like a fiend from the rowdy comotion of battle. He worried about the fate of his comrades though, especially the young leutenant, whose lives seemed vivid. Now, he had wandered east for five days, with food and water both diminishing painfully slow. He feared that his fellow soldiers had all perished, stung by the soar whistle of an enemy bullet.
He awoke with the sweet taste of wine and potroast, and the aromatic scent of his wife, all securely fastened in the desperate clutch of his dreams. What had been lonesome, empty coldness was now heavy, unbearable heat. Charles wetted his lips with the boiling water from his canteen and tried to trudge through the hills, picking up his pack and pistol. His feet sank deeper and deeper, as his pace had to quicken just to keep from sinking.
In distance, beyond the achingly synchronous foreground wavering with the rising heat, he thought he noticed a convoy. The garrison of trucks was winding tortuously slow along the top of the hills.
His heart fluttered uncontrollably as Charles began galloping, boots grabbing heaps of sand and flinging them in the air as they flew toward the vehicles. While flailing his arms madly in the air, he realized the inevitable. Those cars were too far away, and he would never be able to catch up. And besides, what if they belonged to the enemy?
His heart didn't care. He needed people. Having lost all the men in his battalion, he had been trekking through the emptiness by himself for days. With his supplies running low, he needed salvation. He sat upon the top of the dune and almost gave up.
The spicy sun bruised his heart, as all hope faded with the receding sand.
Then, in his semi-conscious dizzying malaise, he noticed that the convoy had turned around. It was headed straight for him now! His elation was sandwhiched between his drying thirst and tightening headache.
Thoughts ran in a maddening array, one bouncing off another.
He squinted his sand-encrusted eyes, as tears of joy dripped clumps of grey from them. He cried like a baby that morning, as days of pain gave way to untethered jubilation.
As those vehicles drew closer, he noticed something. Just like that, his wild ecstasy had turned into unbridled terror. The lead vehicle garnered an unmistakable swastika.
Did he have enough strength to run? Could he burry himself in the sand, and hope that they would not find him? But it was too late. He could not hope to outrun motor cars even in good health on solid ground.
He would not be captured by the enemy. The honorable thing to do now was one that ran contrary to human nature; his survival instinct pounded against his pistol-clutched hand. He swiftly lifted his pistol to his temple. How heavy it seemed now. Charles blew a kiss to his wife and prayed for her happiness, though he knew she would not be able to bear the news of his death. With his last teardrop clinging to his eyelash, he pulled the trigger.
When the dust cleared from his fallen body, and the gunshot a distant ecchoe, the trucks drove up near him. It was his comrades coming to rescue him with captured cars.