March 10th 2791
When Alan awoke, it was daylight again. The Aurora had disappeared and the morning sun shone brightly overhead. He no longer felt dizzy or nauseous, but his head ached painfully. Feeling just beneath his hairline, he traced a little lump growing from where he'd struck the pilot's console in the crash. Probably just a minor concussion, he thought, nothing serious. He turned and shook his companions awake.
Derek sat up groggily, followed by Robbins. The engineer's busted nose had stopped bleeding but still looked badly bruised, having turned the purple shade of a plum; Robbins's eye had also turned a dark shade of blue, but they didn't look too serious. Now that it was daylight again, the three survivors were able to get a better look at their mysterious, albeit stunningly beautiful, surroundings.
The entire countryside, aside from being inexplicably swept clean of snow, had changed completely. It was as if they were in another hemisphere; the environment, although mostly temperate, like England's, was warm and humid, like in mid-spring, with all vegetation in full bloom. They had come down on the edge of a marshland, surrounded by thick woodland, but otherwise they had no idea where they were. Their crashed plane lay out in the marsh, only a few yards away, all smudged and splattered with mud, but still in one piece.
"Well, it seems last night's events were no dream after all. In fact, the mystery couldn't get any crazier. Not only have the time zones shifted but now it seems the seasons have also been reversed," said Alan, staring open-mouthed at their unfamiliar surroundings, "Where do you suppose we are?"
"If your brilliant mind can figure this madness out, then do us a favour and share it, and I'll give you a bloody Nobel Prize for Deduction!" said Robbins sarcastically, staring at the sun, "What time is it, anyway?"
Alan consulted his watch, "Well, according to this, it's around nine-thirty in the evening – in other words, rubbish." He looked up at the sun again, measuring its approximate height in the sky, "With the sun in that position, I'd figure it's probably around ten in the morning."
"How far off-course do you reckon we were?" asked Derek, staring at the unfamiliar countryside, "We were definitely retracing our original course backwards, towards the flight club. Even if we were slightly off-target, shouldn't we at least have made it back to the Newbury area?"
"Then where the hell is the town? The roads? The people?" said Alan, rubbing his temple in frustration, puzzled even more so by the fact that, so far, they had seen no other people about, "This can't be the same place we started from! If I didn't know better, I'd say we were still in the dead zone – only that place is supposed to be a radioactive, desolate wasteland. And that doesn't explain this impossible shift in the time zones and seasons. It's just crazy…"
"Then what has happened to us, Al?" Derek pushed it, seemingly almost desperate for some sort of explanation, "How could the entire world just…cease to exist as a result of a storm hitting us in flight? Whatever kind of freak storm that was…"
"Sorry to interrupt your little debate, gentlemen," said Robbins, "But maybe we should focus on a few priorities first, like treating our injuries and maybe looking for some food?" Alan rolled his eyes; he hated complainers but didn't want to offend the man who was paying them for their time and services. Besides, Robbins had a point; whatever it was that had happened to them, it seemed they might be stuck here for a while and, thus, should determine where they stood with regards to their survival – something he would have to supervise all the way, being the group's expert.
"All right, first, let's go back to the plane and salvage what we can; we need to take inventory of our supplies. Then we can look for some food." The plane was exactly as they'd left it last night, the undercarriage partially submerged in the mud, looking slightly buckled from the rough landing, but otherwise undamaged. Julio's rigid body was visible through the window, still strapped into his seat where they'd left him.
Using some rocks and branches, they made stepping stones so they could walk out to the plane without getting wet again; they moved Julio's body out first and laid it under a tree on the edge of the woods, and out of sight. Searching in the back, Alan found the plane's small emergency kit and passed it out.
Opening up the yellow box, he realised they didn't have much to work with: an inflatable life-raft, a couple of flashlights, a red dye marker, a small fire-hatchet and a first-aid kit. There were no emergency rations, no signal flares and no wilderness equipment of any kind. The first-aid kit consisted of only a few old band-aids, antiseptic wipes, bandages, compressors and a single icepack. Meagre, to say the least, but they could make do with what little they had.
The icepack was passed around between the three men. Alan took his turn, feeling the aching bump on his head slowly start to go down. Derek had found his thermos where he'd left it on his seat, miraculously still intact and each man had a cupful of cold coffee for breakfast.
"Before we do anything else, let's give the pilot a decent burial," said Alan, gesturing at Julio's lifeless body lying in the grass a short distance away, "His body will soon start to rot in this warm weather and I don't know how long we'll be stranded here…"
"Bury him?" asked Robbins incredulously, "What for? A rescue should be here soon enough. Let's just take the body out of camp and leave it somewhere for retrieval." Alan and Derek looked appalled at their employer's cold nature.
"Just because he's dead, doesn't mean he's garbage!" replied Alan sternly, "We might be stranded here for a while and an unburied corpse can quickly present a health hazard. Besides, losing touch with what we believe in, means forsaking our decency as civilised human beings..."
"What we believe in?" sneered Robbins, "What, you got some religious qualms about the deceased, professor? A man of science, prone to such superstitious rubbish? Charming… We've got enough problems as it is, to be wasting precious time digging a useless grave, which is in no way going to help us out of this mess!" Although disgusted by the man's appalling attitude, Alan was not in the mood for a row and cut the argument short. Poor blighter is probably just scared from suddenly finding himself in such an uncertain situation, which he has never experienced before…
"Okay, nobody asked for your help, Mr Robbins. So why don't you start salvaging anything useful you can find from the plane, while Derek and I bury the pilot?" He turned to his friend, "Come on, Deke, let's get started."
Using the hatchet from the plane and a couple of jabbed stones as makeshift shovels, they dug a shallow grave at the foot of a nearby tree. After emptying the pilot's pockets, so the man's personal effects could be returned to his family when they were rescued, they lowered the body into the ground and covered him up. Using his knife, Alan cut away a patch of the rough bark and, with the marker, made an inscription onto the smooth wood beneath:
REST IN PEACE
JULIO ANDRE
1983-2012
"Eternal rest grant unto him and may he rest in peace! In the name of The Father, The Son and of The Holy Ghost. Amen." After observing a moment of silence, and with Julio Andre having been laid to rest with all the decency in their power, they returned to the plane, to take a full inventory of what they had to aid them in their plight. Going carefully through their bags, they discovered, to their utmost dismay, much of their fragile equipment had been ruined in the crash landing.
"Wish me luck getting back the guarantee," Derek said grimly, emptying some loose glass shards from his bag that had once been the screen of his shattered laptop. Robbins' camera was also trashed (While they had been busy burying Julio, he had removed his gun and Taser from their decoy housing and hid them in his pockets). Only their cell phones, which still had no signal, Alan's binoculars and camera, which had been safely tucked away in the shockproof pockets of his traveller's waistcoat, were undamaged.
Going through their pockets, they also included their watches, handkerchiefs, notebooks, pens, a couple of cigarette packs, Alan's knife, his anti-depression medication, his matches, and hipflask to the inventory. Then came the question whether they should try hiking to the nearest town or sit tight and wait for rescue.
"I think it would be best if we just sit tight and wait," said Alan, "Someone is bound to have picked up the ELT's distress signal; help can't be long coming. However, just to be on the safe side, I suggest we make preparations for a lengthy wait right away. First, we need to find nourishment. Let's split up; gather any fruit, berries, nuts and mushrooms you can find. But don't eat anything before I've had a look at them first, in case something's poisonous. One of us should also stay with the plane, just in case."
"I'll stay, to set up a sundial for a navigational reading," said Derek, "Since we have no working GPS, maybe we can figure out where we've been blown to by tracking the sun's movement." He glanced at his watch, "My watch is still set on Greenwich time; you've changed yours to the approximate local time, right?" Alan nodded, "Good, I'll need it for my calculations." Alan handed it to him, smiling at his friend's plan: Derek could determine their longitude by measuring the angle of the sun against the sky and, likewise, determine their latitude by measuring the time difference between the two watches. Although a crude method without proper instruments, nonetheless it was important that they got a general idea of where they were as soon as possible.
"All right Deke, Robbins and I are off to find some food. We'll rendezvous back here in one hour. But, remember, don't stray too far. We don't need anyone getting lost out there." Leaving Derek to his task, the two men split up in different directions.
Alan soon found himself walking alone through the woods, keeping track of his direction by the sun. Αs he walked along, he kept studying the changed environment, admiring the stunning, almost paradise-like, beauty of this place: rich vegetation, all at the peak of physical perfection, like a greenhouse at Kew Gardens, could be seen everywhere. The flora, although seemingly wild in origin, bore no signs of parasites or contaminants, aside from a few fungi and club-mosses growing on the trees and absolutely no signs of any pollution. The environment had somehow been cleansed of all human impact, left pure and untouched. Although at a total loss to explain this impossible transformation, the natural splendour of this place still amazed him. And it wasn't the only surprise he was to encounter that day.
Staring at a bed of mushrooms at the foot of a beech tree, he realised the flora hadn't only turned pristine, but it also somehow become enlarged! The mushrooms at his feet were almost the size of one of his favourite tweed hats; all the surrounding trees, he noticed, towered above him, some over fifty feet high! What was this place?
Drawing his knife, he cut the stem of one and picked it up for a closer look; it looked like an ordinary field mushroom with all its usual characteristics, save for its inexplicably enlarged size. Identifying it as edible, he placed it in a paper bag he had taken from the plane, along with several golf-ball-sized blackberries he'd found growing on a nearby bush. Food would definitely not be a problem here!
As he paused to take a sip of brandy from his hip-flask, he was suddenly startled by distant voices coming from close by. It's the rescue party, he thought, they've come for us! He was about to call out to attract attention, but then realised something was wrong. Why aren't they using vehicles, choppers?
Suspicious, he ducked under some thick foliage to hide, trying to listen, but couldn't make out any recognisable words. Whatever language it was, it certainly wasn't English. Slowly and cautiously, he crawled in the direction of the voices and soon found himself on the edge of a clearing. Positioning himself behind some bushes, he chanced a peak at the 'people' out on the meadow. He had to restrain himself from yelling out loud in surprise, as the most incredible sight he had ever seen before, met his eyes.
What the bloody hell…?
Out in the clearing were not people, but rabbits, grazing; only these rabbits were unlike anything he'd ever seen before. They were amazingly large, some almost three-quarters the size of a full-grown man and, to add to Alan's amazement, he realised these rabbits were actually talking in that mysterious, yet vaguely familiar language. Although they wore no clothing and didn't seem to have any tools or weapons of any kind, they seemed to possess intelligence – almost human-like intelligence!
Alan felt like he'd just tipped over the rim of reality and into madness! He glanced at a comical-looking buck with dark brown fur and a good built chatting with a greyish doe with stunning blue eyes.
"…A laynt meth il Toadflax a veth hay nildel hrow me a e hray varu El-ahrairah!" The buck rolled over laughing at his own joke. The doe, apparently his mate, rolled her eyes at him, "Pathun, a bral thum neylfa-rah Hleengar tringil vao ven u Owsla," she muttered in faint amusement, lovingly nuzzling him.
"Thaf u thrang blel, ma varu nyt Violet, neylfa-rah Hleengar laynt tring ma ven u Owsla. E methil thum a lay u atha ol u Owsla. Asith u naylfa varu Thlayli, thli lay thaf fran. Hrairoo bralil…"
"Meth ol ma rusati roo?"
Another rabbit had walked up to the couple. This one was slender with creamy-brown fur, the colour of coffee, his warm, reddish brown eyes, giving him the air of a very caring and loving fellow. Although he didn't share the first rabbit's large built, he obviously knew how to take care of himself, judging by his well-groomed fur and slender physique. The couple greeted him warmly.
"Oh, vao ni-Frith, Kothen. Tring seth flayrah?"
"Nahl il ma, Pathun; A laynt dayn hli yayn seth flayrah il Hrairoo." The bushy-furred buck, apparently a rabbit of some authority, nodded his permission and passed a patch of clover – a rabbit's delicacy – to the brown-furred rabbit. His friend nodded in gratitude and turned to leave, carrying the clover in his mouth.
Alan, surveying the scene from the bushes, was utterly dumbstruck by what he was seeing. All these strange names he had just heard; Kothen, Hrairoo, Pathon, Thlayli, where had he heard them before? Why, of course! He had read them in his favourite novel, Watership Down! Translated into simple English, they were Hazel, Fiver, Bluebell and Bigwig, the characters of a supposedly fictional story come alive!
Is this a dream? Or is my concussion worse than I thought? he thought, rubbing his eyes, not trusting his own senses anymore, thinking maybe he was hallucinating. But the rabbits out on the meadow didn't disappear.
What had happened to him? Apparently, he and his companions had somehow been thrown into the world of a storybook, or something along those lines. But how was that even possible? Was this even real? Or was it just his drinking playing tricks on him again? However, real or not, he wasn't going to wait there until he was discovered by those things! Quiet as a mouse, he crawled away. After he'd put a safe distance between himself and those rabbits, he turned and ran back towards the plane as fast as his legs would carry him.
When he got back, he saw Robbins had also returned and he and Derek were busy painting large red SOSs on the plane's wings using their dye marker, for any passing rescue planes to see. Deciding to keep the details of what he'd just seen to himself for the moment, Alan showed them the giant mushroom and berries he had collected. Robbins too, he saw, had found similar souvenirs while out looking for food. Derek also had some results for them.
"I've determined our longitude; although I can't be 100% accurate, my calculations put us somewhere just off the western side of the Greenwich line. I've also tried measuring our latitude by comparing the time difference on our watches; according to the math, we should be somewhere out in the middle of the North Atlantic! It doesn't figure…" Everyone was puzzled.
"Are you saying we're still in England? Then how do you explain this place?" asked Robbins incredulously. But they were all too hungry to bother with that right now. It was lunchtime.
"I swear this place is looking more and more mysterious by the minute. Just look at the size of those berries! It really is supernatural, isn't?" asked Derek, staring at the mushrooms and fruit they had piled onto a rock, which they were using as a makeshift table, "What do you think, Al? Could it be some sort of...freak mutation caused by radiation coming from the dead zone?"
"I'm not sure, but at least we won't starve here. There's plenty more where this came from and we can pick it up with our bare hands. Now, as soon as I've sorted out the good stuff from the bad, lunch is in order!" Despite their enlarged size, everything was easily recognisable to Alan's botanical mind, and soon, he had sorted out the edible stuff, discarding the rest.
"Why are you keeping the stuff that's been nibbled at by insects?" asked Robbins, with a hint of irritation in his voice, seeing all those beautiful mushrooms he had carried back here being discarded, "You sure have a weird taste for food…!"
"This is a survival situation, Mr Robbins, not a picnic," said Alan calmly, fighting the urge not to laugh at all that load of inedible crap the man had broken his back dragging back to camp. Apparently, the snobbish journalist didn't know a weed from a flower, simply picking up everything in sight, "If insects can eat them, then it means they're not poisonous. Besides, that pale yellow one you got there is a Death Cap; it may be enlarged but I can recognise those gills anywhere. Also, we'll have to roast them first, to kill any parasites they might be carrying." Although, in the back of his mind, Alan didn't feel the least keen about building a fire, which, he now knew, could attract unwanted attention, the absurdity of risking food poisoning over what had probably just been his imagination, won out.
They built a small campfire and started cooking. Since they had no dishes, or cutlery, or cooking utensils of any kind, they had no choice but to improvise. First, they cut several straight sticks into spits, to grill the mushrooms on. Using a stone and a flattened piece of bark for a dish, Alan mashed the berries into jam, with some crushed nuts for seasoning. Using a bunch of leaves as a food brush, he applied his 'sauce' over the roasted mushrooms. Soon, a hot lunch of mushroom and blackberry jam was served on makeshift dishes made of willow bark. Chopsticks, made from twigs served as cutlery. Alan took the first bite out of his portion. Although not exactly gourmet, it certainly surpassed any cheap, fast-food takeaway.
"My compliments to the chef!" said Derek enthusiastically, raising Alan's hipflask and proposing a toast, as they passed it round. Alan, however, seemed uninterested in joining in the festivities as he absent-mindedly took a sip of grog before turning back to his food without a word, lost in his own thoughts…
Later that afternoon, the trio sat, waiting for the rescue teams to arrive. Alan, who had been quiet all afternoon, was pacing around restlessly, thinking about what he'd seen that morning. Half of him was urging him to go back for a closer look, while the other half kept telling him it wasn't such a good idea. Meanwhile, another, bigger problem was beginning to worry him.
So far, there had been no sign of any rescue parties in the area. What was taking them so long? What if, for some reason, there wasn't anyone out looking for them at all? And with those humanoid rabbits out there – if they had been real –, then it was only a matter of time before they were discovered. Then what? But how exactly was he supposed to explain what he had seen to his companions? They'd never believe him, not in a million years! However, they too, were slowly beginning to catch on to the harsh reality of their situation.
"You know, I don't think anyone is coming for us," said Robbins, "It's been nearly a day and no one has shown up yet. How about if we rig some wire to the radio and make an extension antenna? Increase our signal strength and transmission range?" Little did they realise that Robbins was indeed impatient for someone to arrive – but of course not for any search and rescue party like they were.
"I've been thinking about it, too," said Derek, who had been busy examining the plane for hours, although he wouldn't tell them why. Like Alan, he preferred to keep his thoughts to himself until the right moment, "Unfortunately, it won't work; we simply haven't got a power source strong enough for a crude relay-tower. However, there might be another way." He turned towards the immobilised aircraft out on the marsh.
"I've been examining the plane; aside from some mild buckling of the undercarriage, there's no serious structural damage. If we can taxi it out of there on a ramp, which we can make from timber, and clear a runway, we could take off again. We'd definitely stand a better chance of finding our way back from the air…"
Robbins, although intrigued by the idea, had doubts, "Interesting plan, Dr Shaw, but I'm afraid there is a little flaw," he said as a matter-of-factly, "I don't think we can get the plane out of that muck, at least not without a tow-truck or several mules…" Alan however, was more optimistic.
"It's worth a try. Derek is right; that plane is our best bet of reaching safety – assuming we can find it, if and when we're airborne again. Unless you'd rather we flip a coin and begin a long trek on foot, hoping to stumble across safety?"
"All right, let's do it."
On Derek's direction, the men placed some flat bits of timber under the wheels, improvising a ramp for the plane to slide onto. Then Alan climbed onboard and seated himself in Julio's seat; with the pilot dead, he was the pilot now, inexperienced or not, and this was his plane. Fastening his seatbelt, he set the controls, preparing for ignition.
"Ready to start. Everybody clear!"
He hit the ignition switch; the prop began to spin wildly, the pistons racing. Pushing the throttle to full power, he tried to manoeuvre. He could feel the undercarriage straining beneath him, struggling to loosen from its muddy entrapment, but it wouldn't slide up onto the ramp. The suction from the mud was just too great. Then he heard Derek's voice shouting at him over the roaring noise of the engine.
"Alan, stop it! It's no good. You'll tear the plane apart. Stop it!"
Noticing the engine was indeed overheating, Alan powered down. Although the plane had managed to budge forward a few inches, it remained firmly stuck in the mud. What they needed was a winch to get it out, which they didn't have.
"Well, it was worth a try. It looks like we won't be flying out of here."
"Yes, we're stuck here…" Derek muttered, kicking the ground in frustration. His carefully thought out plan to get them out of here had gone to the dogs. Alan now knew he had no choice but to try and make contact with those giant, talking rabbits. They seemed to be the only intelligent inhabitants of this strange land and they were stranded in their world now, with little or no chances of being rescued anymore. An encounter was simply inevitable.
Author's note: If you want to know the English translation of the Lapine, download the methrahessi translator online. By the way, the survival skills depicted here all come out of actual survival manuals. Please review!