Of all the people in the world, I probably would've chosen any little group besides the people from the office to get marooned with. They weren't bad people, just annoying ones.
Will, Frank, and Jeff were all brothers; that was a mistake right there. You shouldn't work with family, at least not if you're gonna spend all day arguing over football and whose turn it was to pick up mom. The problem was, all three of the brothers were bulky football players themselves, so nobody'd ever had the balls to tell them to shut up. I guess you could say it was lucky that we'd never pissed them off, though, now that we were stranded here. The rest of us weren't exactly Sylvester Stallone.
One guy was named Sylvester, though. The girls considered him tall, dark, and handsome, and he was the company pilot--as of today. Some job he'd done. His little Cessna looked like it was gonna fall apart in the parking lot, but the fact that he'd managed to land it in the parking lot without hitting any cars made us feel a little better. I guess he thought showing off was more important than filling up the gas.
The boss, Rick, died in the crash. Nobody cried. Jeff took his wallet.
There wasn't much for eye candy, either. Charlotte was thin, but her chest was flat, and she died her hair bright colors and dressed up like anime characters. She didn't wear the costumes to work, but she kept the hair. It was just too weird for me, although I guess Will liked it.
Then there was the fat secretary, Maribel. I wouldn't say it like that, but Charlotte told me Maribel fantasizes about me. Apparently those two are friends; Maribel always complained to me about how Charlotte was trying to get her to die her hair, but she liked it black.
There was a black chick, too--Tia--she was hot, but she got killed too. The rest of us just jumped out and ran when the plane hit the ground; she tried to see if Rick was still alive, and that's when the plane blew up.
There was one pearl left among the gravel: Stacy. She was a bit of a Barbie, true, but come on. They make them that way for a reason. And she liked me, too. We usually flirted at work. We were both single, but I guess I was kinda wrapped up in the job, and I didn't want to seem desperate. Well, we were all desperate now.
Stranded on an uncharted island? Seriously? Okay, well, we didn't really know if it was "uncharted" or not, but there was definitely nobody there--we waited all day by the crash site, and nobody came to investigate--so we figured it was better to find shelter and stuff than wait around for boats or planes that weren't coming.
We were lucky to find a stream pretty close to the wrecked plane. We drank our fill, and then decided to split up and search the island, meeting back at the stream. The sun was getting ready to set, so we needed to cover a lot of ground, but it was obviously a dangerous plan, so we agreed to go in pairs. Stacy wanted to go with me. I was a little surprised, but happy about it.
"I'll feel safer with you, Mark," she said. The three brothers chortled at this, thinking--rightly enough--that I wouldn't be much help against wild animals compared to them, but I didn't care what they thought. Stacy was coming with me.
* * *
The further we went into the jungle, the more I couldn't help rolling my eyes at the clichéd nature of it. A tropical island. Uninhabited, presumably uncharted. We were survivors of a plane crash, doomed to finish our lives here, away from all we'd known. This didn't happen in real life. At every turn, I was half-expecting Gilligan to jump out at us and shout, "You're on Candid Camera!" My references were a bit outdated, but so was this cliché. Besides, I was hungry and tired, not used to this kind of exercise, and the humidity made it feel like I was walking through pudding. I almost was, too, with the mud.
Stacy seemed in better shape than me--I guess she must've had to work out to maintain that figure--but she clearly wasn't used to the outdoors. Still, there wasn't much either of us could do but trudge on.
The stream, as it turned out, hadn't been a mere lucky break: the island was full of them. We passed three more in the first hour. And as a result, the plant life flourished--including banana, coconut, mango, and even lemon trees. They were sure to be full of seeds and not as shiny as the ones in the supermarket, but at least the two most basic necessities would be easy to fulfill. That made our primary goal finding shelter.
I didn't like the idea of a cave--after all, something else would probably already be living in it, and the mossy jungle floor would probably be more comfortable--but after three hours, now stumbling around in only starlight, I was beginning to understand that, clichéd or not, this really was a life-threatening situation. Stacy had been clinging to my arm since the sun set, even though that made it harder to tread through the jungle, and we were both relieved to find the convenient little cavern. I didn't even roll my eyes at it, not wanting to provoke it into turning out to be a mirage.
I threw rocks inside repeatedly until Stacy told me to get going, there was obviously nothing in there. This fortunately proved to be true--there were bugs, but those were everywhere, and we didn't find anything big like a bear or smaller like a snake. The cave was in the side of a big rock formation; it was above ground level, the floor being rock too, which meant it would be as uncomfortable as I'd predicted, but at least we would be kind of elevated in case it rained.
"I guess we'll have to meet up with the others tomorrow," I said.
"You should make a fire," said Stacy.
"I dunno how."
"Weren't you ever a boy scout or anything?"
"No."
She sighed, and looked for a place to sit down. It wasn't that big of a cave, but the floor was uneven, and she found a sort of protrusion to use as a chair. Or more of a stool. I just sat down where I was. Even without a fire, the tropical climate kept us relatively warm. I started to think that maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Food, water, warmth, and now a cave. Not high-class living, but we were no longer in immediate danger.
