Day 1

A sudden conglomerate of sounds attacked Justin's ears. His eyes opened gingerly, slowly, as if they were made of lead. He blinked in rapid succession as he looked directly at the sun, far above him in the robin-egg-blue sky, but the groaned, for even that tiniest movement caused pain to shoot through his body. For a few seconds, his brain was cloudy, and he couldn't seem to make his way through it to reach his memories, to find out where he was, what he was doing there, and even what his name was.

But then the cloud lifted and he remembered his name. Justin Langlow, that was it. Okay, what else? He'd been on a plane, Oceanic 815, travelling from Sydney, Australia, across the Pacific to Los Angeles. Why had he been in Australia? He delved deeper and saw clearly now; he'd been trying to buy a painting off a man, but he had refused. But the main question now was: where was he?

He couldn't concentrate properly. There was a massive whirring sound in the background. People not far off were screaming and shouting. Black smoke was wafting over his field of vision, obscuring the sky. He was lying on his back, that was for sure, on what seemed like something soft – sand, if the tickling on the back of his neck was anything to go by. His entire body was wracked with pain. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, gritting his teeth to stop himself screaming out, and looked down. His clothes were ripped and bloodied. His left arm was badly bruised, and he could feel blood trickling down from a cut on his forehead.

'Just what I need,' Justin muttered to himself, his voice hoarse and dry, as if he had swallowed a lot of sand.

The surrounding sound threatened to swallow him whole. It was pounding his ears and brain like a sledgehammer, everything just meshing together to form one long continuous whirring scream. What was going on? What the hell had happened? Surely he should still be on the plane. Unless…

He looked around, urging his eyes to focus. For a few seconds, he saw a blur of colours, but then it was as if he had found the right settings, and he could see clearly. Yet, for what seemed like an age, his brain refused to comprehend, to process what he was seeing.

The plane – or remains of it – were scattered along the beach he was lying on, looking like it had tumbled out of the jungle to his right and scraped along the sand, with bits and pieces tearing from it and being flung over the beach. The main section of the plane, the fuselage, was sitting about fifty metres away like a beached whale, the front torn off so Justin could see the upside-down seats within, as well as the bodies still strapped to them. One of the wings was still attached, jutting into the sky and wobbling in the breeze, but from the looks of things, neither the front section of the plane, nor the tail section, were present.

Not too far away from the fuselage was one of the plane engines, the turbines still spinning, creating a whirring roar that almost made Justin cover his hands with his ears. It was whipping up sand and spilled clothes and other luggage and sending them spiralling through the air. Other pieces of wreckage had embedded themselves into the sand. One such piece of metal, three metres in diameter, had slammed into the sand not half a metre from where Justin was.

But what was worse than the wreckage itself were the people running around it, looking like flies buzzing around a carcass, screaming and shouting to one another, looking for loved ones and helping injured people out of harm's way. Others sat crying. Yet others still lay motionless on the sand. Unconscious or worse.

Some Chinese guy came running past him, shouting something in a language he didn't understand. A young woman in a pink dress was standing in the centre of the wreckage, tears streaming down her cheeks, screaming something that was inaudible over the incredible noise of the engine. Some large, bumbling guy brushed past him, shouting, 'Karen! Where are you?' over and over again.

This was unreal, Justin thought to himself, as he pulled himself up to his shaky feet and did a three-sixty. It seemed impossible that the plane had crashed here – wherever here was, perhaps Hawaii or some other island in the Pacific – and yet so many people seemed to have survived. Justin reckoned there were a few dozen at least, most with what seemed to be rather superficial injuries. Justin glanced at his own cut in the reflective surface of a piece of metal; it seemed fairly small.

'Walt! Walt!' A black guy came charging past, seemingly unconcerned about where he was going, and Justin was forced to sidestep him to avoid him; he almost tripped over what looked like the dead body of some huge guy with long curly hair, but as he accidentally trod on his head, the guy grunted incomprehensibly and tried to raise his head.

There were too many things happening at once, Justin didn't know where to look. Another black guy, sporting dreadlocks, was observing the scene without an almost too-cool demeanour. An Iraqi guy was dragging injured people away from the spinning turbine.

'Hey! Get over here! Give me a hand!'

Justin turned around and saw some other guy, tall with short hair and wearing a suit, kneeling before a man trapped under what looked like one of the plane tyres. He was beckoning Justin towards him with his hand, indicating frantically that he couldn't lift it by himself.

'Brilliant,' Justin muttered to himself, and jogged over to the trapped man. A jolt of pain shot through his body again, but he forced himself to ignore it.

'You! Come on! Come over here!' the man in the suit shouted, and a bald, middle-aged guy with a cut across his right eye came staggering over, looking like he wasn't entirely steady on his feet yet.

'On the count of three!' the man called out to Justin and the bald guy, and Justin grabbed hold of the tyre. 'One. Two. THREE!'

Justin heaved, feeling his muscles strain. Together, the three of them managed to lift the tyre a couple of inches, and the suit-guy rushed in, grabbed hold of the man's arms and tugged him out. His leg was a bloody, mangled mess. Suit-guy quickly took control, ripping off his own tie and using it as a tourniquet around the man's leg.

'All right, get him out of here!' Suit-guy told the bald, middle-aged guy. 'Get him away from the engine! Get him out of here!'

The bald guy nodded, helped the injured man up and started staggering away with him. Justin turned back to Suit-guy, but he was already running away through the wreckage.

Justin turned around in a full circle. The noises, the screams, they were getting too much for him. He had a headache that made him wince in pain every time he blinked. Some guy in his late thirties, tall and rather imposing-looking, bounded past. Someone else was staggering out of the wreckage, a guy in his twenties, sporting a nasty-looking cut on his forehead and a scowl.

'Hey, you okay?' Justin asked him, noticing he wasn't walking straight.

'Piss off,' the guy growled.

'I was just concerned about a brain haemorrhage, but it might do you some good,' Justin shot back.

Suddenly, there was a huge explosion. Justin whirled around in time to see the spinning turbine of the engine explode in a shower of debris and sand. Justin dived to the floor, as shards of metal rained down upon the already-panicked survivors. Superheated air blasted Justin in the back of the neck, and he was sure he smelled his hairs singeing.

'Hey! Hey, somebody!'

Justin looked up to see who was shouting. It was the black guy he'd seen earlier, the one with dreadlocks. He was bending over someone, pressing on their chest and listening to their breaths. He was looking over his shoulder every now and then at something Justin couldn't see, and shouting for help. He caught Justin's eye as he scrambled to his feet.

'Hey, you!' the guy called out.

'Oh, why can't I just experience a plane crash in peace?' Justin muttered under his breath, but hurried over to the guy. 'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Is he going to be alright?'

'He's not breathing, but I've got it covered,' the black guy responded. 'But there's someone in the water over there, face down.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'She's been like that for a while, don't know if she's dead or not. Is there a doctor around?'

'Are you not one? You look like you know what you're doing.'

'I was in the LAPD for three years,' the black guy retorted. 'I learned first aid, nothing more.'

'Dreadlocks, huh? New style for the LAPD?' Justin raised an eyebrow. 'Alright, I'm going,' he added, as the guy turned and looked at him questionably.

He headed down towards the water's edge, jumping over motionless bodies, pieces of wreckage embedded in the sand and opened luggage bags. He waded in up to his mid leg, grabbed hold of the woman who was floating face down in the water and dragged her back to the shore. He turned her over and let her lie in the sand. Her black, waterlogged hair fell over her pale face. She wasn't breathing, Justin noticed.

'Oh, brilliant,' he muttered.

He checked her pulse. It was faint, but it was there. Great, that was a good sign. Now to correct the breathing problem. How did they do it in movies? Push on the chest and breathe in through their mouth? Yeah, something like that. He positioned his hands over her chest and hesitated. Was there a specific place to do it? Under the diaphragm? He couldn't remember.

He glanced around and saw the guy in a suit performing CPR on a black woman. He tried to copy him, pressing down on her chest a few times, taking hold of her nostrils and blowing into her mouth. He checked her breathing – nope, still not there. He did it a few more times, checking each time, but she wasn't doing it by herself.

'Oh, breath, you stupid woman! I'm just wasting energy if you're just going to die on me after all this!' he said angrily.

Almost as if she had heard him, the woman spluttered and coughed up water. Her eyes flashed open and she looked up at Justin, her pupils wide as she drew in deep breaths, her chest convulsing with every one she took.

'Well, you're alive at least,' Justin said. 'Though I'd be dealing with a corpse in a few minutes.'

The woman looked like she was trying to say something, but nothing was coming out, only raspy breaths.

'No need to talk, just breath,' Justin told her. 'I was never a good listener anyway. I'd only zone out.'

Some guy came racing across the sand towards them. He was quite young, with brown hair. 'Hey! You guys! Do you have a pen? I really need a pen!' he yelled anxiously.

'A little inconvenient to be writing in your diary, wouldn't you say?' Justin smirked.

'No, no, it's some woman over there!' the other guy tried to explain breathlessly. 'She's not breathing, so we're, we want to try the pen in the throat thing, you know, where you get the pen and…' He tried to mime it, then shook his hands and added, 'So, do you have a pen then?'

'Yeah, there's one in my office in LA,' Justin replied. 'To get there, just go over the water here – you should hit land eventually – and then find a plane, preferably a more stable one than Oceanic 815 and – '

'Thanks for your help,' the guy said sarcastically, and rushed off.

The woman sat up. She had regained some colour in her face now. She smiled up at Justin. 'Thanks,' she whispered.

'Ah, no problem.' Justin smiled back. 'I was bored and saw you in the water – thought I'd save you.'

'Hey, watch out!' someone screamed.

Justin turned around. The wing of the plane, the one still attached to the fuselage, was starting to fall. The guy with the suit, now accompanied with some big, fat guy and a pregnant girl, were running away from standing in the wing's shadow.

'I'd get down,' Justin advised the woman.

They cowered behind a large piece of metal, and felt, rather than saw, the resultant explosion as the wing crashed into the sand. A huge tyre was flung into the air and rolled across the beach when it landed. Justin stood up and looked around. Everyone was standing still now, staring at the fuselage. Those that had survived the crash seemed to have gotten over the shock – they seemed relieved now. The worst was over, they all seemed to be thinking. Justin very much doubted that was the case.

A quiet, post-disaster atmosphere had fallen over the survivors of Oceanic 815. Smoke from the explosions was wafting over the crash site, nullifying whatever noise remained. The survivors seemed to be mostly wandering around, picking through the luggage, trying to find their own; reuniting with loved ones; mourning the dead. Others still were trying out their phones, trying to get a signal, hoping to contact the outside world. They would have no such luck, Peter Thayer knew. The first thing he had done was check his own phone, but he had no signal. Wherever they were, they were far away from any civilisation.

But Peter didn't know whether that was such a bad thing.

Peter knew he was different somehow – 'special', according to his father. He had always been interested in animals and the outside world; that was probably why he became a zoologist when he was older. His father before him had been one, and he had fuelled his dream. He always felt more comfortable, more at home, in the wilderness than in civilisation, trapped in a concrete jungle.

The crash was a horrible thing, he knew. He knew that lives had been lost, that families had been torn apart. But, for the first time in a long while, Peter felt free. It was as if he had left all his problems behind in Australia. He had no need to worry about any of those things anymore. Of course, no on else seemed to be thinking along the same lines as him.

As darkness started to fall, Peter looked around at his fellow survivors. He was used to sitting still in the African bush for hours at end, waiting for animals to appear, so he no problem resting on the sand and observing everyone else around him. In fact, most of the time, he preferred to simply watch that interact with someone.

A pregnant girl was rubbing her bulging stomach down by the water's edge. A guy with long, swept-back hair was smoking a cigarette. A black guy with dreadlocks seemed to be looking for someone amongst the wreckage. A robust, heavily-built guy was handing out food. Some others were building fires, tossing logs into the flames, hoping against hope that a passing plane would spot it. In theory, it should work, Peter knew. If Flight 815 crashed along the usual flight path from Sydney to Los Angeles, then another plane would surely come along shortly. But, all the same, Peter had a strange, niggling feeling in his head. They won't find it, it said.

Already, Peter had the feeling that this place was unusual. He couldn't quite place it, but he had been to many wild areas around the world in his life, and none of them quite compared to this. It felt mysterious in a way he couldn't explain, yet he was strangely drawn to it. Everyone else was too busy flitting around to notice it.

Actually, no. Someone else seemed to have noticed it. There was some guy further along the beach. He was middle-aged, bald, and with a strange look in his eye as he sat, as still as a statue, staring out at the ocean.

'You want any food?'

Peter looked up. It was the big guy who was handing out food. His name was Hurley or something.

'I'm fine,' Peter replied.

'You've, er, been fairly quiet since we got here,' Hurley said, studying him carefully. 'I mean, are you alright and everything?'

'I'm just contemplating,' Peter said.

'Yeah, well, contemplating isn't going to feed you,' Hurley muttered. 'But, if you're sure…' He lumbered away.

Peter turned back to look out at the ocean. He remembered this place. He had seen it in a dream – no, a vision. His father had always said he was 'special'. He had believed his visions, as he called them, were a gift, that he would help a lot of people. At the time, Peter had dismissed it, he had believed them to be nothing more than strange dreams. But the resemblance was uncanny. He had felt a connection to the place in his dreams, and now he felt a similar connection.

He was free.

As darkness fell, fires started to spring up, fuelled by wood gathered by the Iraqi guy. Justin wandered through the wreckage. In the night, the sight of the fuselage, looking very much liked a beached whale, was almost creepy, especially since he knew there were dozens of dead bodies inside it. Eventually, they would have to take care of that, but it wasn't Justin's problem – let someone else deal with it, he thought, he had no intention of being a leader.

Understandably, everyone had moved as far away from the fuselage as they could, crowding around fires and whispering in twos or threes, occasionally looking out across the ocean or up at the sky as if hoping rescue would miraculously appear. Others were trying out phones, but with no success, and others still were pacing up and down impatiently.

Forty-odd people seemed to have survived the crash. Justin was no expert about plane stability or even how fast they had been going when they had plummeted (he had been knocked out during the turbulence), but he had seen enough plane crash stories at work to know that an unusually high number of people had survived. It was made even stranger because of the fact that it seemed to have been a particularly violent crash. For one, the wreckage was strewn all over the beach and surrounding jungle, and for another, the tail section and front section were missing. The woman who Justin had resuscitated (who was called Haley) said she had said the tail section rip apart when they were still underwater, and the front section had come lose as they were over the island itself.

Justin didn't care that much for strangers, and now he was surrounded by dozens of them, each with their own stories and agendas. Suit-guy, who was called Jack, was already being hailed a 'hero' by some for his efforts during the crash. He was a pathological fixer, Justin could tell, he existed only to make things better and do the right thing. He was sitting on the sand, and had been joined by a woman with brown wavy hair.

Nearby, a Chinese couple were huddled together, speaking to each other in a language Justin couldn't understand. Neither of them seemed to be looking each other in the eye. The marriage that was falling apart, Justin thought with a barely-concealed grin.

Some black guy with dreadlocks, the police officer Justin had briefly spoken to before, was standing over everyone, looking around. He was pretending he had power, pretending he had everything under control, putting on the 'cool face'. But, in reality, he was obviously just as scared and disorientated and alone as everyone else.

The guy who had told him to piss off earlier was standing by himself, leaning against some wreckage. He had short brown hair and a permanent scowl. Trying to seem like he didn't want attention, that he wanted to be left alone, but the truth was, he wanted attention more than anyone.

Then, of course, were the anomalies that Justin couldn't read. Two guys were sitting on the sand by themselves, a middle-aged, bald guy, close to the ocean, and a younger guy, taller with an unkempt beard, was sitting closer to the tree line. Both seemed lost in thought, perhaps contemplating their current situation. But Justin knew the quiet loners were always the ones to watch out for the most…

'Hey, I got some food for you.' It was Haley. She had raced off after that fat guy to grab something to eat, and had returned with what looked like a poorly-wrapped, crushed (and probably sand-filled) sandwich.

'Thanks.' Justin took it and hastily tucked in; his last meal had been at Sydney Airport several hours before.

'Poor guy.'

Justin followed Haley's gaze. She was looking at some guy he had glimpsed earlier. He was fairly large, perhaps in his late thirties, wearing glasses and stumbling around the crash site, calling out for someone.

'Think he's looking for his wife,' Haley said.

Justin could hear him now, shouting, 'Karen! Karen!' over and over again. Several people were looking at him sympathetically, but no one was making any attempt to comfort him. Justin could see why. They were all strangers here; it would just be awkward.

'Look, there's a dead jellyfish over there,' Justin said, hoping to change the subject and pull the two of them away from the poor guy, but he had already seen them and came over, looking superbly out of place, as if his body just didn't suit walking.

'Have you seen, er, a woman with blonde hair, thin, early thirties?' the man asked, pushing his glasses up his nose. 'She's, er, got a tattoo on her shoulder. Her name's Karen.'

'We heard,' Justin said brusquely.

'No, we haven't,' Haley answered quickly, perhaps feeling that Justin's comment wouldn't be amazingly sensitive. 'Have you checked everywhere? I mean, the fuselage is…' She stopped herself, and suddenly became interested in a small rock to avoid looking at the man's eyes, which were brimming with tears.

'I've checked the fuselage, but she's not there,' the man replied. 'But, I mean, if she were dead, I'd find her, right? But I can't even find her body everywhere. That's a good sign, right? Means she's alive somewhere.'

'Unless her body fell out over the jungle,' Justin said.

'Well, I mean, she was in the front section of the plane…' the guy said quietly, lowering his head. 'We were both there, but I needed the toilet, and the one nearest was occupied or something – some stewards were banging on the, er, the door. So I, er, found another one, and then the plane, it split apart and then…' The guy stopped talking. Justin was glad; he sounded awkward even when he was just speaking.

Haley shrugged. 'She might be alive then, I guess.' She glanced towards Justin as the guy turned his head towards the jungle, and he saw her expression – she didn't believe what she said.

'You think the cockpit's in there then?' the man asked, pointing towards the dark jungle.

'Er, yeah, but we shouldn't go in now,' Haley said quickly ('We?' Justin muttered). 'Too dark. We might fall down a hole or something, and we'd probably get lost.'

'Yeah, but what if she's alive and scared and trying to find me?' the man asked, clearly getting worked up, pushing his glasses up again. 'I'm her husband – I should be looking after her, she shouldn't be wandering around in some dark jungle on her own; I mean, it's my fault that we were in Australia to begin with… Well, I mean, I didn't drag her along, but she wanted to come, and if I hadn't come in the first place…' The guy was basically mumbling to himself now.

'Hey, it's okay, it's okay.' Haley put an arm on the guy's shoulder. 'I'm sure she'll be fine. What's your name anyway?'

'It's, er, Colin. Colin Bishop.'

'I'm Haley and this is – '

'Mister Ed,' Justin supplied.

' – Justin,' Haley finished. She shot Justin a look. 'Come on, let's get you sat down,' she said to Colin, and started to direct him towards the nearest campfire.

Some girl wandered into their path, looking confused. She was only young, maybe in her early twenties at the oldest, with brown hair and red-rimmed eyes. Justin sighed – another problem to content with.

'Lost your dog?' he asked sarcastically.

'I, er, no.' The girl looked dazed and glanced at them with unfocused eyes. She had an Australian accent. 'Do I know you?'

'I doubt that,' Justin said.

'I don't understand,' the girl muttered. 'Where are we? Did this plane crash or something?'

'The Nobel Prize awaits, sweetheart.' What was wrong with her? Did the crash mess up her brain. It couldn't take a genius to figure out what had happened here.

The girl swallowed and looked like she might cry. 'I… I don't remember anything before the crash,' she uttered quietly. 'I don't know why I was on the plane in the first place.' She paused and then said, ' I don't even know my own name.'

Justin felt a chill go up his spine. He glanced at Haley. Her eyes were wide. Colin was in too much of a state to hear what was going on.

'Er, maybe you have amnesia,' Haley said. She glanced around. 'Maybe we should find that doctor – he should be able to sort this out…'

But their search to find Jack did not last long. A horrible sound suddenly rent the air. Justin nearly jumped out of his skin. It was a horrible, metal-on-metal creaking sound, followed by what seemed like a quasi-growling noise, coming from the jungle. Everyone was on their feet immediately and looking towards the centre of the island.

'Is that Vincent?' some black kid asked hopefully.

'It's not Vincent,' a man muttered, presumably his father.

Jack pushed past everyone to be at the front, followed by the woman with brown hair and some guy with a hood called Charles or Charlie; the black guy with dreadlocks rushed forward as well; some guy smoking a cigarette and with long hair narrowed his eyes as he looked towards the interior of the island as the sound came again; the younger guy who had asked for a pen earlier was stopping a blonde-haired woman from getting too close to the treeline.

Suddenly, the noise came again, followed by the noise of a tree crashing to the ground, followed by another and another. Birds flocked from the jungle into the night sky. Bushes were moving in the centre of the island, just below the mountains.

'Did anyone see that?' the pregnant girl asked shrilly.

'No, I was napping,' Justin said sarcastically.

Other people had arrived, all looking scared and confused. Colin's eyes were wide behind his glasses; the guy with a scowl had temporarily lost it, allowing Justin to see his good-looking, arrogant face; the guy with the beard was more confused than scared, and the face of the middle-aged, bald man was unfathomable and expressionless.

The metallic screeching came again, and Justin heard more trees being felled. There came a sound like cogs or gears grinding, and then all was silent again. The only sound was the wind rustling over the trees.

'Terrific,' Charlie muttered.