Just Our Luck
Chapter One
A sharp pain deep in her chest woke Rosie up with a start. It was like daggers clawing their way up her throat to her mouth, and she gagged and coughed. Hands were on her shoulders, pushing her one way and then the hands were moving around her face. Long wet hair was pulled away from her mouth as she gasped for air between each cough.
When she had finally cleared her mouth of the salty water, Rosie rested her head back on the warm ground and took several deep breaths.
"Are you okay? Hey! You alright?"
Noise seemed to appear out of nowhere. The hand was still on her shoulder and she realized the person had been shaking her violently. Screams seemed to drift closer and farther away, some sounded like names being cried out and others just sounded terrified.
It felt like it took all of her energy to lift her head from the warm ground and look up at the man kneeling over her, still shaking her shoulder and moving the wet hair from her face.
"Are you okay?" His voice finally seemed to stay in one place as Rosie blinked. Blinding bright light made it hard to see until the man shifted and blocked the sunlight. "Can you hear me?"
Rosie opened her mouth but no words came out. She coughed again, spitting salty water from her mouth. She nodded when the coughing subsided and his hand squeezed her shoulder tightly.
"Good, thought you were a goner for a second," he said, leaning back and blinding her again.
"Where am I?" she asked, her throat unbelievably sore and scratchy.
When the man didn't respond Rosie carefully opened her eyes, peeking through her eyelashes until they adjusted to the bright light. The man was gone and Rosie craned her neck to look around her.
Icy cold water lapped at her bare toes; a sharp contrast to the warm sand pressed against her side. Moving slowly, she pushed herself up onto her elbows, her soaking wet clothes clinging to her skin and making moving around difficult. The water at her feet was rhythmic, pulling away and leaving her skin covered in goosebumps before splashing back and the foam grabbing at her ankles again.
Sand splashed against her face as someone ran by, bringing Rosie's attention away from the water at her toes to the people around her.
She was laying at the waters edge, clearly on a sandy beach but where?
Another body was laying on the sand next to her, and she reached over and grabbed their shoulder.
"Hey," Rosie said, shaking their shoulder as the man had done to her when they didn't respond. The man was large, with short hair and wearing a suit laying with his back to her. She shook his shoulder harder and got up onto her knees carefully – her back aching at the movement. "Are you okay?"
The man rolled limply over onto his back, his head hitting the sand beside Rosie's knees with a thud. She jumped back at the sight of his face; blue lips and eyes wide open but he could not see Rosie. A large gash opened the skin on his cheek and before Rosie could look away she saw his teeth broken and bloody through the hole.
"What the fuck?!" she shrieked, falling back onto her butt and pushing herself away from the dead body.
"Have you seen my son!?" a man screamed, sliding to a stop in the sand a few feet from where Rosie was sitting. "Hey, girl! Have you seen my boy?"
Rosie slowly shook her head, not able to look away from those bright blue eyes staring back at Rosie in such shock. Sand splashed against her arm as the man turned and ran, screaming to other people asking if they had seen his son.
A loud groan, something inhuman, started from somewhere behind Rosie. She tore her eyes away from the dead man in front of her and craned her neck to look as the noise grew louder.
"Holy..." Rosie's jaw dropped at the sight behind her. She slowly made her way to her knees and then carefully to her unsteady legs. She nearly collapsed back onto the sand when her foot sank into the dry sand but she kept her balance.
Half of a plane, battered and wrecked lay in the sand down the beach, bits of metal and scraps of bags and clothes and bodies littered the ground all around it. Thick black clouds of smoke rose up from the wreckage and littered the air with the smell of burning ash.
The groan grew louder and louder until a sharp bang silenced the screams around her. Something in the plane had caught fire, the blast sending sand raining down around Rosie. Lifting her arms, Rosie tried to check herself to see if – besides waking up with water in her lungs and a sore back – she was hurt. A long gash stung on her upper arm when she brushed the sand off and a lump was clearly swelling on her lower back, but she seemed to be in better shape than the man laying dead in the sand behind her.
Giving him a last long look, Rosie took a deep breath and scanned the other bodies around her.
She had no idea where they were, no recollection of a plane crash, or what had happened between taking off in Australia and waking up in the sand. Rosie did remember one thing though, she had been sitting on that plane with her brother next to her – and he wasn't laying in the sand around her.
Looking to the water Rosie felt her chest tighten. He had been sitting beside her on the plane, what if he had been in the water too? What if whoever had dragged her out of the ocean hadn't been able to grab her brother? She watched the waves move up and down, crashing all along the beach and coming up to lick at her toes before retreating. There were no other bodies floating in the water.
Maybe he had already woken up, maybe he had never even been in the water. Rosie turned to the half of a plane that was sitting in the sand further down the beach.
People were running around, some screaming for people they were looking for and others dragging bodies and bags away from the plane. A man was bouncing between bodies on the ground, turning some over and checking for pulses at their necks before leaving them on the sand. He came closer to Rosie, saying something that she couldn't hear over the noise.
"Are you okay?" he repeated, running closer and glancing at the other bodies around Rosie – all soaking wet like her but none awake. "Are they?"
Rosie turned to the man in the suit behind her, the gash and broken teeth making her stomach turn. She hadn't even noticed the other bodies. A woman in a short skirt lay just behind the man, something long sticking out of her leg and her neck bent at a weird angle.
Still, the man checked each and every person, coming to stand beside Rosie again when he had determined that none of them would wake again.
"Do you know where we are?" Rosie asked, watching the man carefully. He was at least a head taller than her, broad shoulders and sharp blue eyes.
"I don't know, somewhere in the Pacific," he said, eyes scanning further down the beach.
"Specific," Rosie mumbled, but the man had already moved away from her and running to another body that was laying motionless in the sand. Should she be checking bodies too? What would she even do if she found one who was not dead?
Her attention wandered back to the plane. The smoke was becoming less heavy but the smell was terrible. Rosie walked closer to the plane where a group of people were gathered, carefully moving around the sharp pieces of metal.
Someone was sobbing hysterically, a woman with blonde hair and tan legs splattered with blood. Before Rosie could think to ask her if she was okay the man who had been checking the bodies ran up to her and gathered her into his arms, the two talking frantically between sobs.
"I need some help over here! Hey, buddy!"
At the voice Rosie's head jerked to the side, scanning the sand for where she had heard that familiar sound.
"Can someone help me!?" Rosie ran around the side of the plane, her legs sore under her but her heart pounding hard in her chest. Her brother wasn't in the water or laying dead on the beach. He was yelling for help!
"Rosie!" She choked back a cry when she couldn't see him, turning to look behind her and spinning...still unable to see him. What if she was just going crazy? What if this was some hysterical illusion and her brother really was floating in the water somewhere?
But then she saw him sitting in the sand near the trees, waving his hands in the air and motioning her over when she saw him. She ran to the trees, jumping over a piece of metal and sliding to a stop at his feet, falling to her knees and throwing her arms over his shoulders.
"You're okay! Oh my god, you're okay!" she cried, pressing her cheek against his shoulder as he hugged her back.
"You're soaked," he said when Rosie pulled back and sat on the sand in front of him, tears of relief sliding down her cheeks. She looked down at her clothes, a pair of slacks and her button up which were indeed soaking wet. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine," Rosie said quickly, touching the gash on her arm tenderly. It stung and was still covered in sand, but it seemed like the bleeding had stopped for the most part. "You're okay?" she asked, her chest still tight and her lungs still hurting. She took a deep breath and let it out.
"I think so," he said slowly, looking to the girl beside him. Rosie finally looked to the people beside him, most of whom had all been quiet while Rosie had been crying. A woman smiled weakly at her, her thin arms wrapped tightly around her very large, very pregnant stomach. "Jack asked me to look after her," Hugo said, motioning with his elbow to the woman.
"Who's Jack?"
"He's a doctor."
"There's a doctor? So are there ambulances?" Rosie's heart started pounding again and she looked around the beach, almost expecting to see people in uniforms coming down the beach...but there were only hysterical people in varying degrees of distress.
"I think he was on the plane."
"So, no one has come yet? How could they not see a plane crashing?"
"I think we're on a small island," the pregnant woman said, her Australian accent strong. "I was awake during the crash, I think I saw where we crashed."
"An island," Rosie echoed, moving from her knees to sit on her butt in front of her brother.
"Yeah," Hugo said slowly, dark eyes watching the people on the beach. "Dude, this sucks."
Author's Note: Hey guys, just wanted to say welcome and thanks for reading! If you have any feedback, let me know! :)