Chapter 2... Welcome
I feel it would be an oversight of criminal proportions, not to say how utterly floored I was by the reception given to Chapter 1 of this series. As something started on a whim to get the creative juices flowing, I was in two minds about whether to publish it at all. The last thing I expected was for it to be as well received as it has been. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Once again, I must express my deepest thanks and undying admiration to my editors for making all my work - this one included - legible enough to be enjoyed. The ever-present Sophie, Kiwi, Jacky, Ben and SP
.
You have made these stories what they are. Thank you, too.
As always, all characters in this story are of legal age, and it is written as a work of fiction. Any likeness to actual people or events is coincidental and is in no way the basis for this story. If you do know of any similarities... Congratulations. I want to hear all about it.
Now, on with the story. Enjoy
*********
The next morning was just as visually stunning as the previous day had been. If there were ever a question as to where you would want to be stranded with little hope for rescue, this would be close to the top of the list. The island, or the little I had seen of it, was paradise. The pure, fine, white sandy beaches. The tall, fruit-ladened palm trees rocked lazily in the gentle breeze. The pleasantly warm temperature of the air was heated by the tropical sun and cooled by the crystal-clear turquoise waters. The sounds of tropical birds mixed with the soft wind. Looking up at the mountain, the mists were starting to drift upwards, like a ghost being released from its prison out of the tree canopy and into the clear blue skies. It was perfect.
Of course, none of us were thinking of that.
The discovery of Ellie the Elephant had shaken me to my core. The bottom had fallen out of my world, and I had collapsed under the emotional weight of the preceding twenty-four hours. Hayley and Hannah had seen me fall and had both rushed over, quickly followed by Amy the Doctor, and the rest of the group. The two stewardesses had recognized the toy immediately, and with it, the implied connotation that little Jonny, along with his mother, had been lost in the crash. The only thought that seemed willing to stay for more than a few moments in my mind was simply to ask why them. Why did I survive when they could have lived instead? What kind of God ended the lives of a young boy and his mother, only to spare a man in his mid-thirties with almost nothing to live for?
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.
My breakdown had a profound impact on the group. As if we were all collectively holding it together, for the sake of the others, the first of us to break gave everyone else permission to let their own bottled-up feelings finally escape.
The group gathered around me, sitting or kneeling in the lapping waves, all of us holding everyone else, and we just sobbed... all of us. Even Tom, whose condition stereotypically robbed him of the ability to express emotion, cried and wailed along with everyone else.
Somehow, over the course of hours, and long after the sun had gone down, we dragged ourselves back up onto the beach closer to the swaying palm trees, curled up into one large pile and, for the most part, we passed out.
The day had been exhausting to a degree that most people will never experience in their lifetimes. They should be grateful for that. But the only thing worse than that level of tiredness was feeling it and still not being able to sleep. With Hayley curled up on one side of me, and Hannah on the other, both sleeping peacefully, I just lay there, staring up at an endless star-lit sky.
By morning, most of us had recovered. The catharsis of getting those emotions out seemingly pulled everyone out of their stupor. Even Louisa, a Latino-looking woman around my age whose husband had gone down with the plane, was working to keep herself busy. Over the course of the night, the tides had changed, and, as Ray had predicted, the luggage and wreckage from the crash were starting to wash up on shore. So, with the exception of Lizzy and Hannah, who started making their way towards the mountain not long after daybreak, and Tom and Amy, who were trying to knock coconuts from the trees and open them without spilling their milk. The remainder of the group waded into the water, or scoured the beach, pulling every case and every piece of debris we could find to a central point on the sand.
In a moment of unexpected clarity, I had realized that
everything
would need to be saved, as much of it as we could. We had no idea what piece of scrap, or which seemingly worthless item in a case, might be useful days, weeks, or even months from now. Ray, for example, had decided that despite the low chances of it being spotted by rescue aircraft, we would need to build a fire. Even if we didn't light it until we spotted something worth lighting it for.
But aside from a few dried-out palm leaves, there was nothing to burn. That would mean we would need to cut down a tree, and contrary to what Minecraft may have taught you, you can't do that by simply punching it. Somewhere in these cases or piles of twisted metal may have been something that could form part of an ax or a saw. Or if there wasn't, maybe there was something that could help us make one some other way.
Hell, maybe one of them had a lighter because I sure as shit didn't know how to light a fire without one.
"This is going to have to be something of a regular job for us as well," Ray said as he dropped one of those reinforced plastic suitcases onto the pile. "Something like ninety percent of all goods on earth are still transported by sea, and you would be amazed at what falls off those container ships. You never know what could wash up here."
With my eyelids being held open by less than a few hours of sleep, I just nodded and carried on dragging part of what looked like a plane door further up the beach.
Time is an odd thing. Five minutes of overtime in the Superbowl goes by in the blink of an eye; five minutes hopping from one foot to the other outside an occupied bathroom feels substantially longer. With no means of accurately measuring its passing, aside from the general movement of the sun, it had become impossible to tell how long even the simplest of tasks had taken. All I knew was that the sun had been fairly low in the sky when we had started and was now beating down on us from close to its apex. But it was mid-summer on a latitude that I was unfamiliar with, so that could have been two or three hours. It could have been six. Either could have been true, but what was also true was the fact that all of us, despite not wanting to say it aloud, were waiting for Elizabeth and Hannah to return. That waiting was dragging out this seemingly simple task into eternity.
On their shoulders rested the fate of our group. Food was already looking bountiful. Trees heavy with all manner of fruit could be found only a few dozen yards into the tree line. Coconuts, bananas, mangos, and citrus trees laden with oranges and limes. Not to mention the immeasurable numbers of fish swimming around our feet when we waded into the water. All of these added up to the realization that nobody was in danger of starving on this island. No, what really mattered was fresh water. The only person capable of reliably finding it, was now several long hours into an expedition with no means of communication with the rest of us. For all we knew, the two of them could have been hurt and unable to call for help. They could have gotten lost. None of us had really considered the possibilities of predators on the island either, poisonous insects... the list of things that could have happened to them was long. Nobody wanted to be the first to voice those concerns, but there were plenty of nervous, anticipatory glances into the trees as we worked.
It was Amy who finally called a halt to the afternoon's labors. "Alright, everyone out of the sun!" She shouted over the beach, as she and Tom dropped armfuls of coconuts onto the sand beneath the shade of the trees.
"No, there is still too much left to do," Ray grumbled, looking back at the volumes of debris still bobbing in the shallows. "Anything we miss could end up floating away."
"Yes, I know. But none of us has had anything to drink since the plane. Dehydration is a very real danger until we find water, so until then, you are going to need to take it easy."
"But..."
"Listen..." Amy rounded on him. "You're a military man, Coast Guard, right?" She waited for him to nod before continuing. "Who is the highest authority on a ship at sea?"
"The Captain." He said with a confused look on his face.
"Wrong, it's the Doctor. Doctors are the only ones able to supersede a Captain's orders." She answered back, smiling but clearly tolerating no question of who was in charge at this moment. "Now, I need you to stop, take a break, cool down, and get something liquid into you. Because I don't feel like losing any more people, least of all on the first day here. And if you pass out, I don't have an IV or fluids to bring you back. Understood?"
Ray sighed but nodded in acquiescence. "Yes, Ma'am."
I had to admit, casting a look back to the sea and then up and down the beach, I had started the conversation agreeing with Ray. The tides that had washed us here seemed to have brought every piece of luggage and cargo on the flight here, not to mention a large portion of the actual wreckage. The bits that had already washed onto the beach were safe. They were going nowhere until the tides changed again. But the pieces still floating in the water could be taken out of reach by the smallest gusts of wind. It was only as Amy pointed out the risks of dehydration did I allow myself to feel it. The headache stomping through my brain would have put the worst hangover in history to shame. My muscles seemed to be on the verge of cramping constantly, and there was a definite shake in my hand as I dropped the aircraft door onto the pile.
Hayley was still sticking close, not quite clinging onto me as she had done the day before and throughout the night. But she seemed to be making a point of staying within view of me. She and one of the other girls, a high-school teacher in her late twenties by the name of Katie, seemed to have struck up something of a friendship. The pair of them were chatting happily as I joined the group and flopped down onto the sand. Hayley had a glint in her eyes and a hungry look on her face as I brushed the sand from my sweat-sheened body and reached for a coconut. Katie giggled a little and whispered something to her. A grin curled onto the redheaded stewardess's face as I examined the brown, hairy fruit and arched an eyebrow at Tom.
I should point out here that "beggars can't be choosers" is about as close to Gospel as a group of starving, dehydrated island survivors are going to find. I don't like coconut. I have never liked coconut; not coconut milk, not even coconut-flavored candy. It just wasn't my thing. It was, perhaps, for that reason that I had never dedicated a single moment of thought to how exactly you open one.
The answer, as it turned out, was '
carefully.'
Tom, it would seem,
loved
coconuts and had devised a system of opening them involving a few carefully chosen rocks. Without even realizing he was performing a demonstration to the less coconut-orientated members of the group, he took a long, pointed rock, pressed it against the shell, and then used another larger rock to hammer it in. He then drank the milk straight from the hole, then smashed the rest of the fruit open on a larger rock, and pulled the flesh off the inside of the shell with his fingers. Some of the others seemed to be trying to pull the hair off them, apparently taking issue with drinking the milk through the fibers of the coconuts' outer shells. Tom, apparently, couldn't have cared less.
"Alright, people, no more than two each," Amy said, wiping a dribble of milk off her chin with a gesture that, under any other circumstances, would have looked downright pornographic.
Katie frowned, looking over her shoulders at the countless palm trees, most of them heavy with fruit. "Why? It's not like we have to ration. There must be thousands of them."
"Coconuts are a natural laxative," Amy replied with a grunt, smashing hers open on a rock by her knees and collecting the shell halves before they gathered sand. "They are great for rehydrating you, but too much, too soon could give you a nasty case of diarrhea. At this point, having the shits would be worse for you than drinking nothing."
I'm not sure why I laughed. But having a medical professional referring to a potentially life-threatening condition as "the shits" just tickled me. The laughter was instantly cut off by the full-body shudder that ran through me as I swallowed down the first mouthful of coconut milk. I eyeballed the hole in the top of my fruit uneasily as Hayley and Katie giggled louder.
"Looks like someone doesn't like coconut." Hayley laughed.
"I would rather be eating anything else... literally," I chuckled back.
