The sand blew across the beach and hit the face of one of the survivors.
It attached itself to his clothes and his skin, blowing away again as the wind picked it up. Some of the sand entered his mouth and blew to the back of his mouth, causing his reflexes to make him cough and this bringing him back to consciousness.
He spluttered and spat on to the warm, golden sand. Suddenly he was aware of everything around him. He could hear deafening whines and screams exploding around him, the screams like sirens.
His heart was racing and his stomach felt tight as he realised he was winded. He turned from his side on to his back and was suddenly blinded by a bright, warm light emitting from above him. He put his hand over his eyes, his fingers parted, and squinted at the bright light. He was being blinded by the sun, and around it, lay a perfect blue blanket of sky.
Someone ran past his side, shouting a name he thought was Shannon. He couldn't work out where he was but wherever he was, he knew he shouldn't be there.
He attempted to think back to what he could remember. He remembered clearly being on a plane, flying from Sydney to Los Angeles. When was that? He couldn't remember anything since being on the flight. An odd sensation flooded through him as he realised he couldn't remember landing in LA at all.
He sat up and turned his head which was pounding heavily. What he saw was a large mess of what looked like lumps of metal, stuck in the ground. People ran about the scene confronting him, some shouting names, some just running aimlessly around.
He turned his head the other way and saw the same destruction. A large object lay near to him, two wheel-shaped things attached to a deformed piece of metal.
He turned his head back again, this time noticing a much larger object laying in the sand that made everything else seem tiny in comparison.
He couldn't work out what it was but it had smoke coming from it and a fire burning at the end. He recognised something on the smoking, black mound. A logo that he felt he knew. Most of it was clear except for a corner, which was scrapped off and blackened.
Something else caught his eye now, a spinning circular object next to the mound with the logo. He recognised it straight away as a plane engine.
That was odd…something clicked in his head that caused him to suddenly jump up and spin around, glancing at the area surrounding him. He checked out the logo again and realised where he recognised it from. Oceanic Airways. The company he was flying with was Oceanic. The large objects in the sand were all from the same thing. A plane. The spinning, whining form was a plane engine and the large mound with the logo on was the fuselage. The fuselage from the plane he was on.
He suddenly felt weak at the knees and his heart froze for a second. He scanned the scene around him again, the same mass of people screaming and running, dodging the scraps of plane.
He bent over, putting his hands on his knees and taking a few deep breaths.
Sawyer looked up at the sky and down at the wreckage.
"Son of a bitch."