Chapter 6:
Everything was fuzzy as Luffy opened his eyes. The ground beneath him felt soft, softer than the normal hammock he slept on. He blinked a few times, looking straight up at a blue ceiling above him that waved and rippled in the wind. "Where am I?" he wondered out loud.
The pirate lifted up his head and looked to his right. Zoro was lying down on a bed made of seat cushions next to him. He looked down and realized that's exactly what he was lying on too. Luffy looked a little farther and the man on Zoro's other side was moaning loudly and his breathing was staggered. There was a large piece of metal sticking out of the guy's side and it didn't look good.
He heard a lighter breathing between him and Zoro and looked down between their two elevated mattresses. "Nami?" he asked as he saw the girl with orange hair lying between them.
She stirred and lifted her head, first looking at Zoro's bed and grimacing at the sight of the man still unconscious. Nami turned the other way and her eyes opened wide, "Luffy!" she jumped up fast, surprising the other teenager who stayed lying in his bed.
"What's up Nami?" Luffy sat up and then screamed, "OOOWWWW!"
"Baka!" Nami lightly hit him on top of his head. She didn't hit him as hard as usual, even though he was rubber, because of the white bandage wrapped around his skull. "How did you get so hurt?" She'd been wondering about it since they got back, but it bothered her to no end.
"The monster!" Luffy exclaimed and sat up again, forgetting about his injuries that made him scream once more.
"You saw it out there?" Nami asked him. The others returned with the pilot, the transceiver, but no news about seeing a monster in the forest.
"I tried fighting it, but, I couldn't punch it," Luffy's eyes were heavy and before he could go into more detail, Jack walked in with Hurley right behind him, there to examine the worst off of the patients.
The doctor was surprised Luffy was already awake, but at this point it barely showed on his face. "Are you feeling alright?" he asked the skinny teenager who lay back down with blurry vision again.
"Considering he keeps screaming in pain, I'd say it's a good sign," Nami responded for him since Luffy started mumbling and his eyes closed again. "Luffy? Luffy?!"
"It's okay, he probably just needs some rest," Jack shook his head and smiled a little. He had seen this kid survive a lot, there was no way he was giving up here. "However," Jack turned to the man with shrapnel sticking out of his side and it was clear something needed to be done, and fast.
Usopp watched the group start walking into the forest and he stopped his shaking legs. "I can do this," he stated to himself and started running forward. "I'm a brave man of the seas! Hey wait up!" he called after the group and chased them into the start of the forest.
Kate turned around and saw the teenager with the long nose running towards them. One of those pirates, her eyes opened a little wider as she saw who else was slowly jogging towards them. They continued to walk through the woods and Kate grinned at the man with long blonde hair as he walked past her, "Looks like you decided to join us."
"I'm a complex guy Sweetheart," he responded. The redneck scared Usopp enough to make him stay back near Charlie and Sayid who he trusted enough. After watching the fight between the redneck and his dark-skinned friend, he believed Sayid could protect him if danger arose in the forest and that was one of the main reasons he chose to come.
The trek into the woods was long, since they had to climb uphill almost the entire time. The whole point of the journey was to get to higher ground so that they could send a message on the transceiver. It would have been a pretty quiet journey, if it weren't for the teenager telling far-fetched stories that made little to no sense about his home village and defending from pirates.
"If I have to hear one more God damn," Sawyer began as he grabbed a long vine hanging off the cliff and pulled himself up to the next ledge. He reached back and helped Kate up while Usopp mentioned how he once landed on an island that was actually a piece of giant goldfish poop. This time he actually grinned and chuckled at how stupid the story was, but caught himself when Kate smiled at his reaction. He grunted and turned back around, mumbling, "Stupid kid."
The other part of the trip that was noisy was Shannon and Boone arguing with each other the whole time. The brother and sister duo were getting on people's nerves even more than the scrawny teenager.
Charlie was moving pretty slowly, purposely staying behind Shannon so he could stare at the beautiful blonde's ass during the hike. Usopp was falling behind and he really wished he had more upper-body strength at the moment. Up ahead of him, Boone was trying to help his sister to the next overhang, but she was struggling against him and didn't want his help. He watched as the vine she was holding onto wiggled and strained, and then he heard a loud ripping sound.
"Shannon!" Boone reached for his sister but she had been pulling away from him and was now falling down the steep slope. She bounced once and it knocked her far enough away from the ledge that if she fell again, she would definitely die from the fall.
"AHHHH!" she screamed and then felt a jolt on her arm as she was grabbed.
"Hold, on!" Usopp yelled as he held onto the vine with one arm and leaned off the wall to grab her with his other. She kept screaming as the vine swung back and slammed into the wall with the skinny man still holding her by the wrist.
Charlie looked back and his eyes opened wide when the girl fell past him, but he was in no position to save her. He was too doped up from his heroin stash to think clearly, and it almost cost Shannon her life as she fell past him. All these thoughts flew through his mind as Usopp helped the girl back to a steady position.
"Are you alright?" he asked her as he stared a spot on her left thigh where she bumped into the wall and cut herself.
"Y-You saved me," she whispered and then she realized Boone was one hundred percent right, she didn't belong here. She knew she couldn't let him win though and she had to toughen up. "Thanks," she muttered and then pulled herself up past him.
"I did?" Usopp asked himself and then looked up to see the others smiling in relief and Kate even called out that he did a good job. His instincts to start bragging about it kicked in, but everyone already saw. I can't wait to tell Luffy and the others when I get back. Hopefully they're both awake when I get back down there.
The group finally made it to another plateau of flat land. They weren't at the highest point yet, but they were pretty high up. Sawyer was in the back of the group and everyone was getting pretty exhausted after all this hiking. "Check the transceiver."
"We won't get any reception here," Sayid replied in annoyance.
"Just try it," the redneck said again.
"I don't want to waste the battery," the Arab man replied, getting even more infuriated by the second. Usopp and everyone else there were getting tired of the two going back and forth, but none of them were stepping in the middle of it.
The two started screaming at each other and then everyone stopped and became absolutely silent as a loud growl was heard in the bushes near them. They were in some pretty tall grass and were still surrounded by trees on all side, even if the trees were thinned out at this higher altitude.
Charlie heard rustling in the trees and the sound of cracking branches and his eyes opened wide. He and Kate had the same fear rush through them as they imagined whatever beat up Luffy so bad and ripped trees out of their sockets was coming. Sweat started pouring down Charlie's face and he took a step back.
"GRR, GRRRR!" The noises got louder and the rustling as well.
"What was that?" Boone asked nervously.
"Something's coming," Kate stated, also with sweat pouring down her face from the hike and from the fear.
The growling sounds were getting louder and they could see the grass moving in the near distance. "IT'S THE MONSTER!" Usopp screamed and turned around, sprinting away.
"Come on let's move," Kate told the others and started running, Sayid and Charlie following right behind her.
"I shouldn't have come!" Shannon yelled but Boone grabbed her and started pulling her along as he sprinted away too.
The whole group was running in a line and Kate was amazed at how fast Usopp was sprinting away from the thing chasing them. She looked back and saw the blonde haired man standing still and staring off in the direction of whatever was coming. "Sawyer!" she yelled and took a step back, but Sayid grabbed her and told her to leave him.
Shannon screamed and they all rushed away, until one loud gunshot made them all snap their heads back and stop running. BANG, BANG BANG BANG. Gunshots kept ringing out and everyone stopped and stared back at Sawyer who was calmly pointing a gun backwards and firing it over and over again.
The roaring beast got closer and closer and then lunged out of the grass with its paws stretched out towards the man who took one more shot and then leaned back away from the falling beast. The creature fell to the ground and skid to a stop a foot in front of the redneck. It started moaning and breathing deeply while the rest of the group walked back over to it. They were all staring at it in awe and Shannon said, "That's, that's a big bear."
"Think that's what's you heard at the cockpit?" Boone asked.
"No," Charlie responded, scared of the bear but nowhere near as much as he was of the monster. "That's a teeny tiny version of what attacked Luffy."
"Guys this isn't just a bear, it's a polar bear." Kate stared at the white bear in shock.
"That can't be a polar bear," Boone said but everyone else just repeated in a daze that it was definitely a polar bear.
While they were talking about it, Usopp was staring at the gun still in Sawyer's hand and Kate was the first one to ask where it came from. "I don't know, bear village?"
"Not the bear, the gun?" Kate repeated and now everyone turned to them.
"I got it off one of the bodies," he explained where he found it off a dead marshal and while he was explaining, Kate was moving ever closer to him. "...thought it might come in handy, and guess what? I just shot a bear!"
While Sawyer and Sayid started arguing about the gun, Kate snuck up behind him and Usopp went wide-eyed as the girl pushed Sawyer and nabbed the gun from him, pointing it at Sawyer and asking, "Does anyone know how to use a gun?" Sayid explained to her how to take it apart and she removed all the pieces.
Usopp watched her carefully and he noticed something. He was a liar by trade, and she definitely knew how to use that gun. She was lying, and he got a bad feeling as she walked away and leaned up against a tree. Kate, who are you?
"We've got a bar!" Sayid shouted as he checked the transceiver at a higher point on the mountain. "Mayday mayday!" There was squeaky noise coming from the machine and Sayid told them it was feedback.
"What would do that?" Kate asked.
"I know what would do that. This guy not fixing the radio, the thing doesn't even work." Sawyer accused.
Usopp believed in his new friend though and listened closely like the rest as Sayid explained. "Something else is already transmitting. Somewhere close."
"Somewhere close, like on the island? That's great!" Charlie exclaimed, thinking maybe it wasn't deserted after all.
The group kept arguing about what it could be, though Usopp had no idea what all these technical terms they kept talking about were and just kept his mouth shut for once. Sayid found the right frequency, but the voice coming from the other side was speaking a language none of them understood.
"That's French! The French are coming! I never thought I'd be so happy to hear the French!" Charlie was shouting with joy and then a weird voice stated a bunch of numbers in a low tone. The French started again and they all tried to figure out what it was saying, but Shannon was the only one who understood the language according to Boone.
She argued with her brother, saying that she didn't know it she just spent a year hanging out with boyfriends there. The batteries were dying and they needed her to translate fast. "You can do this," Usopp encouraged her while everyone else was yelling. She looked at him and her nervous look calmed down a little as she turned her attention to the radio.
The girl started in a shaky voice, "It's repeating."
"She's right," Sayid noticed it too after the third time of the voice starting. Every time it spoke, a mechanical low man's voice would come over the French woman's and say 'Iteration' followed by a bunch of numbers. "It's a loop."
Sayid guessed what the next number would be and Sawyer was yelling about how no one else understood what he was talking about. Usopp was staring at the remote with a growing sense of dread as he added those numbers up in his head along with how much time each message was taking. "It's saying the number of times the message has repeated!" Sayid exclaimed. "It's roughly thirty seconds long, so," he started mumbling numbers.
"Sixteen years," Usopp whispered quietly.
Boone was staring at his sister expectantly and the blonde haired girl began, "She's saying. Please, please help me. Please come get me." Everyone started shouting at each other as Sawyer yelled his doubts about her French translating abilities. Charlie reminded them the battery was dying and they all let Shannon listen. She continued, "I'm alone now. On the island alone. Um," she put it up to her ear as the low battery was making it hard to hear. "Please someone come. The others, they're, they're dead. It killed them. It killed them all."
"Sixteen years," Sayid said. He heard Usopp say it before, but now he'd double checked with his own math. "Sixteen years and five months is the count. The iterations, it's a distress call. A plea for help, a mayday. If the count is right, it's been playing over and over, for sixteen years."
"Someone else was stranded here?" Boone asked as Charlie looked around the island with fear in his eyes.
"Maybe someone came for them," Kate offered.
"If someone came," Sawyer responded. "Then why is it still playing?"
Everyone became silent and Charlie stared off into the jungle, "Guys, where are we?"