Mark Two
A tiny plane, really. A research trip - 5 girls if you include me, clipboards, getting used to seeing everyone in their own clothes, working out how it was going to be for the rest of the holidays. Planning sunbathing breaks in-between plankton research. Already imagining holiday romances...
Not just us on the plane, of course. 6 boys in varying states of rowdiness, a few tourists.
Anyway, as I said, a tiny plane really. For such a huge and unexpected tropical storm, and from what I gathered a fairly inexperienced driver.
The next few hours were...blurry. Thunder, lightening, smoke, water, choking - isn't water supposed to be smooth and thirst quenching? It isn't supposed to burn on the way down. Sight blackening and opening into a vista of waves, nothing beneath my feet, sinking, bobbing, floating, flailing. Wanting it to end so badly, nearly giving up.
Feeling wet sand underneath my face, the sun rising in the distance, and finally giving in and letting myself rest.
And then hearing a noise in my head, a shrill, piercing, one-tone sound.
Opening my eyes and seeing feet. Following them, a face.
One of the boys off the plane.
"Eurgh," I croak, attempting to lever myself up. "What on Earth is going on?"
...
Jack Merridew picked up a stick and stirred the sand with it, prodding at nothing in particular.
The three bedraggled girls opposite him looked at him suspiciously and huddled closer together.
Jack tried very hard not to notice there was already a faction forming.
Once, I could pass off a coincidence. But twice? God must have it in for me.
Besides this, he knew full well they were only anywhere near him because Ralph had talked to them, and Ralph was the handsome one. Obviously.
They would follow him wherever he went.
Not for the first time, Jack felt a snake of fear as he considered how badly things had got...last time.
"It won't be like that this time," he muttered quietly, "I can't let it."
What scared him the most, he thought, was that he actually wouldn't mind, going back to...the old ways.
Jack shook it off and sprang to his feet, pacing the little clearing they had rested in, then stopped with relief as he saw Ralph re-enter, with a soaking wet, sandy girl following him.
"She's the only one I found," said Ralph immediately, brushing off any pending questions, "I only really checked the main area, but I doubt anyone in less than full health could have moved away, or would have wanted to, and any uninjured would have heard the whistle."
"You are clever," said one of the girls.
"Shut up, Alison," said another one, huddling closer to her companions, "what about Jen? And all those boys?"
Alison looked away, ashamed.
Ralph sat down, resting his elbows against his knees.
The wet girl cautiously lowered herself on the sand, a little away from Alison and the girls.
There was silence as Ralph put his thinking face on.
Jack could put his thought process down to a tee.
We need a signal.
We should build a fire. A fire is a signal.
But last time...
We need a signal!
What about the...
A signal!
But the fire...
Eventually Ralph seemed to come to a decision.
"We need," he said, taking a deep breath, "to build a signal. I'm thinking a bonfire."
Jack accidentally snapped his prodding stick.
"No." he said, adamantly, dropping its mangled remains. "No fire."
"Jack," said Ralph, appealing directly to him, "come on. You know it makes sense."
"And you know what happened last time," said Jack in a low voice so the others couldn't hear, "I can't risk that, Ralph."
"We've got experience," said Ralph, "and hindsight is a wonderful thing. And we aren't 12 years old any more, Jack. I think you can trust that...that the beastie won't bother us, you know?"
Jack shook his head, unconvinced.
"I can feel it still. In here-" he thumped his heart to emphasise the point, "stirring inside of me. I don't trust myself with anything about this island. Do you really think it's a coincidence that we're stranded here? Again?"
"Maybe it's fate," continued Ralph, unperturbed, "so we can put things right. For last time. And we can start by following Piggy's example." he turned to the rest of the group, "Can I take your names please?"
Jack bit his lip.
"Alison," said Alison, smiling radiantly, then shrugging sullenly when the other girls directed looks at her.
"Julie," said the girl who had reprimanded her first, sweeping her blonde hair back from her face.
"Caroline," said another girl, her teary dark eyes burning into first Ralph, and then Jack.
"Lynette," said the girl Ralph had brought from the beach. She hesitated. "You can call me Lynnie."
"And I'm Ralph," said Ralph, "and this is Jack."
Jack fought the urge to correct him - almost everywhere he went he was known as Merridew nowadays. He gulped.
"Yeah," he said, "I'm Jack."
"So what now?" asked Julie, rubbing Caroline's back as she began to cry again.
"Shelters-" said Jack quickly, cutting Ralph off. "We should build shelters. In case there's another storm."
Predictably, the girls all looked to Ralph for ratification.
Ralph nodded grimly.
"With any luck, we won't have one after yesterday, at least not until we get rescued. But it might be best to build them."
"I think we should build the signal first." said Julie, putting Caroline aside. "That way we won't need to waste time building shelters."
"You've seen what a storm around here is like," argued Jack, "and we aren't exactly buzzing with budding rescuers, are we?"
"Yet!" said Julie, pursuing her point, "And on the off chance that someone passes, do you really want to just let it drift away?"
"I'm not risking everything on an off chance." said Jack scathingly.
Julie raised an eyebrow.
"Risking everything?" she repeated.
Jack shrugged awkwardly, trying to regain his nonchalance.
"Figure of speech." he said, brusque.
Ralph cut in on the argument.
"We've just had a storm," he said, "so we don't need to build shelters right away. But before we start with fire and whatnot-" he continued as Jack tried to interrupt, "I want to go down to the beach and look at the debris that's washed ashore. There might be a radio...or anything that could help us, really."
Julie and Jack both nodded begrudgingly, accepting the logic of Ralph's argument.
"Come on then," huffed Julie, heading for the beach.
Ralph and Jack exchanged a glance before following their group out.
They walked in near silence, brushing ineffectively at moist, wet foliage that stuck to their faces and then hands. Before long, the foliage began to thin, and the mud had more of a sandy, coarse quality to it – Jack noticed that Lynnie only had one shoe, and wondered disconnectedly if that was getting on her nerves.
Ralph shielded his face as, at the front of the rag-taggle group, sunlight broke through the trees. They finished an uphill stretch and suddenly, unannounced in front of them, the beach stretched out, with parts of the plane strewn in clusters around, apparently brought in by the tide.
"Stay here," said Ralph firmly, already heading towards the beach, "I'm going to check first."
Jack was only too happy to wait, knowing only too well what Ralph would be checking for. There was some kind of gallows humour in imagining Alison's reactions when she came across a dead body.
Jack smiled grimly and watched as Ralph approached the wreckage, picking his way across twisted metal.
Behind him, someone started sobbing again. Jack ignored it and carried on watching as Ralph scrambled up and levered himself into the cockpit, the biggest part of what was left of the plane. It was attached to half of the passenger tube, buried steadfastly into the sand.
A frown creased Jack's face as he waited.
Moments passed.
Finally, Ralph popped half out of the cockpit and waved Jack over, too far away to clearly see his expression.
Jack grimaced and broke into a half-jog, uttering a brusque "Stay here," To the girls.
He hadn't gone three steps when he heard someone scramble up behind him to catch up. He looked around to see Lynnie.
"What do you want?" he asked, annoyed, "Christ, you haven't even got both shoes, are you mad?"
Lynnie scowled, slightly breathless.
"How do you know it's you he wants anyway?" she challenged, coming up alongside him.
"Because I know him?" asked Jack.
"Bullshit." Said Lynnie, "It's because you're a boy."
"No it isn't," argued Jack, knowing it was futile, "besides…Ralph and I have experience…"
"What kind of experience?" persisted Lynnie, unconvinced.
Jack ignored her and sprinted the last few metres, peering into the cockpit. Far below, Ralph was lying flat on his front, fiddling with the dashboard.
"Ralph?" called Jack to get his attention.
Ralph flipped over and squinted into the sunlight.
"Brilliant," he said, "I'm going to try and crawl through to the end, will you try to fathom this dashboard out for me?"
"Right," said Jack, "Crawl through then and I'll come down."
With some difficulty, Ralph turned himself around in the cramped space until he was head first down the tunnel. Jack scrambled up and jumped down into the tunnel, already examining the mess off buttons that represented the controls.
"No wonder he bloody crashed," shouted Jack after Ralph.
"Excuse me!" came the voice of Lynnie from above him.
"Excuse you what? No-one asked you to come!" shouted Jack back up, the sun hurting his eyes.
"I'm studying to be a marine biologist!" said Lynnie, maintaining a civil demeanour, "meaning that unlike you, I have actually been on a computer!"
Jack grimaced.
"I suppose you'd better come down then."
"Brilliant," said Lynnie, landing heavily on the cockpit floor, "let's get going."
She wormed her way towards the back of the control panel, following a loose wire. Jack raised an eyebrow and focused his attention on the dashboard, working out which key did what.
"What kind of experience, anyway?" came Lynnie's muffled voice from the cranny.
Jack's innards gave a nervous wiggle.
"Have you found that loose cable, yet?" he blurted out, jamming a few fingers against some buttons.
Lynnie bent her head out awkwardly.
"I asked first."
Jack feigned a sudden and ridiculous interest in one of the buttons.
"Oh, come on, Jack. You can't keep dropping little cryptic hints all over the place and not expect questions. Practice your story on me."
"What story?" asked Jack defensively, struggling to find many other angles from which to approach the dashboard.
"Please?" asked Lynnie.
"Um. No." said Jack, "Are you nearly done?"
"Would you stop changing the subject?" asked Lynnie, pulling herself out, "turn it on please."
"What?" asked Jack, baffled.
"Have you actually done anything?" asked Lynnie, leaning across and flicking a lever.
Nothing happened.
"Generator's wrecked," said Lynnie, disappointed, "bad luck."
"Luck," snorted Jack, sticking his head down the plane tunnel, "need any help in there?"
"I'm alright, thanks," said Ralph from over his head, "apparently you can get out the other side."
"I think we're done down here," said Lynnie, sticking her foot onto a faintly precarious foothold and climbing her way out. Jack looked at the wreckage one more time, and followed her out, wiping his face with his sleeve.
"Ugh...it's so hot around here," he said, climbing out and scrambling down, "ouch."
He looked at his hand, which had been scratched on a bit of outstretched metal and was now bleeding profusely.
"I don't get why hands always bleed so much," he said, "anyone got a bit of rag?"
"Here," said Ralph, throwing him something filthy, "of dubious hygiene, try not to get any diseases."
"Thanks," said Jack, pressing the rag to his hand "you find anything?"
"Zip," said Ralph, "I take it the radio wasn't working?"
"Generator's gone," said Lynnie before Jack could say anything, "I checked."
Ralph directed an amused glance at Jack before switching into action.
"Let's go then," he said, heading back towards the trees.
Jack heaved a sigh and followed him.