Act One: Survival
Chapter One: The First Day
Mid-Morning, 16th June
Pain surged through my body. My head throbbed and every joint ached and pulsed. I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on my back and struggled to open my eyes. I was used to feeling shit on this holiday, but this was much worse than normal. The lack of the boat's gentle rocking worried me, but I just figured that I was just still slightly drunk from the night before and so was imagining things. Considering the rest of the trip's mornings, it wasn't much of a stretch.
I inched open my eyes to try and have a look at where on the boat I'd ended up. I couldn't focus my vision at all, but could make out the beige and green colours on the floor and the perfect blue of the sky. I definitely wasn't on the boat anymore.
As my senses came back to me, I could feel my soaked clothes clinging to me while I lay face down in sand. Small waves were gently crashing behind me and the wind was rustling the leaves of nearby trees. My stomach was empty, my throat was completely dry, and I was aching all over. I raised my head and tried to focus my sight. With great effort, I managed to focus my vision and make out more of the landscape. It was beautiful; just past the short sandy beach I found myself on was lush green grass, rolling hills, and a small but beautiful cascading waterfall. It was more tropical than the Mediterranean landscape I was used to, with some oddly present oak trees added in.
Mustering as much strength as I could, I gracelessly forced myself over onto my back, groaning and swearing under my breath as I did. This let me take in the open air and think about what I was going to do. Somewhat convinced that this was a 'hilarious' joke played on me by my friends, I looked towards the sea expecting to see the yacht anchored not far away. Nothing. No boats, not even any other land to be seen.
I lay there for what felt like a few minutes but was probably more like an hour. I had no idea what had happened; the thought that I could actually be stranded on this island briefly crossed my mind, but I pushed it away in favour of optimistic denial.
After a long time of staring absentmindedly up into the sky, I decided that I should try and find water of some description, my thinking being that it would at least help me pass the time until my friends came back to pick me up.
Planting my hands on the floor, I pushed myself to sit up. As I slid my legs back, I felt a powerful throbbing pain in my left leg. A check of my lower leg revealed a massive laceration down the side of it; it had bled profusely all over the rest of my leg but had clearly been there for a while as the blood had clotted. Touching it hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced before in my life but, unfortunately, there wasn't a lot I could do about it at this point.
There was nothing majorly wrong with the rest of my body, a lot of minor cuts and bruises but the one leg meant they felt relatively insignificant. Trying to minimise the use of that leg, I slowly and carefully stood up, putting most of my weight on my right leg rather than my left.
Once I had stood up, I took a good look at my surroundings. It was about midday at this point, so the sun was beaming down all over the landscape before me. The grass was bright green and the water was glistening a pure blue. Everything seemed eternally peaceful. I figured a good move would be to find some fresh water and the best place to look for that would be the bottom of the nearby waterfall. Moving was going to take a great deal of effort, however. I limped and stumbled my way across to the nearest tree to steady myself then moved onto the next one. A few trees and about 10 minutes later I had made it to the stream the waterfall ran into. I collapsed next to it, bringing immense pain to my leg despite trying to put more weight on the good one.
The water was astonishingly clear; I could see right to the rocky bed of the stream with ease. It was an absolutely amazing sight when I was used to the murky waters of the Thames back home. Trying to ignore my never ending pain, I put my face next to the water, made a bowl shape with my hands and lifted handfuls of water up to my face, drinking some and splashing others over my face as fast as my arms would let me, which turned out to not be particularly fast. The feeling of rehydration was incredible, at least compared to the rest of the day's events so far.
I indulged myself for a few minutes before I looked up and spotted an apple falling from a faraway oak tree. This was a weird place. I didn't particularly care or even think of the possibility that these apples could in some way be dangerous seeming as these trees seemed very unnaturally placed. I pulled myself up and stumbled to the nearest tree a few feet away. Sure enough, when I looked up there were, inexplicably, apples hanging from the branches. They were as ripe and bright red as you could find in a supermarket back home. Unfortunately, they were too high up for me to reach and I couldn't climb the tree with my leg in the condition it was, so I gripped one of the lower branches and shook it as hard and fast as I possibly could; which in my current state wasn't particularly hard or fast. A number of apples were dislodged and fell to the ground; I scrabbled around on the floor as best as I could to get a few of these, hastily devouring a couple of them right down to the core and putting two more in my sodden pockets.
My hunger and thirst somewhat satisfied for the moment, I pulled myself back to the tree so I could sit down underneath and use it as shade from the sun. I hadn't realised how much energy I was using by just moving. I exhaustedly sat with my back resting on the tree for a while and tried to figure out what to do about my leg. I had done basic first aid with the Scouts but that was years ago, I couldn't remember a thing. I figured that I should try to wash and bandage it.
Using the tree for balance, I picked myself up and limped back to the stream where I sat back down and put my leg close to the water. I leant over, slowly and painfully lifted my trouser leg up past the gash, then splashed some water over it and tried to rub some of the dirt out of the wound that had gathered. The blood washing off the wound tainted the flowing water as the dark red spread across the stream. I had to fight through the pain caused just by touching the wound, wincing as I went. This took a lot longer than it probably should have but that pain was intense, I couldn't wash it for long at a time before having to stop for breaks.
After about five minutes of this, I was fairly satisfied – and sick of the pain – so I ripped off a few very uneven strips of my shirt to use as makeshift bandages, quickly washed them in an untainted section of the water slightly upstream and gently wrapped them around my leg. Once I had that bandaged to the best of my ability, I slowly lowered my trouser leg over the wound.
I started to realise the situation that I was in. The sun was getting ever lower and, while I didn't want to admit it, I had to find shelter for the night since the temperature could potentially drop sharply; I felt like I had to play it safe. It dawned on me that my first year's accommodation at university might not be the worst place I was ever going to live in.
Sitting back to rest against the tree, I scanned the surroundings. Nothing immediately leapt out at me as an obvious place to shelter. I was pretty disheartened; I didn't know the first thing about building a shelter and was in no state to do so regardless. However, after a long period of staring into the distance in disbelief, I spotted what looked like a cave hidden behind the leaves on a low hanging branch of a tree. It was on the other side of the stream but a fair distance away in the side of one of the larger hill peaks in the area. I had no idea how big it was or if it would even be suitable at all as a shelter, but I had to go for it; there weren't enough hours left in the day to look for anywhere else.
I carefully pushed myself upright and started to cross the stream. While not being a large stream, I spent a long time doing this just to make sure I didn't slip and damage myself further; I had enough problems as it was. I eventually negotiated the stream and made my way to the cave opening. Moving the low hanging branch out of the way revealed a small alcove, no more than 15-foot-deep and 10-foot-wide. It would do for the night at least, a place to sleep and to try to think of some way out of this mess. The branch's leaves covering my new home would also provide some sort of paltry defence if any harsh winds picked up.
As I moved in, I let the branch fling back to cover the entrance, sat down against one of the alcove's walls and had my pathetic dinner of two now soggy and disgusting apples. They would at least stave off my hunger for a while. Afterwards, I sat there motionless for ages. I wasn't sure for how long, but the sun had nearly completely set afterwards.
I just thought over the whole situation I was in. I had no idea what had happened or how to get out of it. Were my friends still on the boat or were they in the same situation somewhere on this island? To keep myself sane, I decided that I'd fallen overboard and they were currently looking for me. It helped for a few precious moments until my thoughts drifted to Lucy and my family. What if I never saw them again?It was a horrible thought. As a tear found a path down my cheek, I tried to convince myself once more that I would be back on the yacht soon. I wasn't entirely successful as thoughts of being stranded forever preyed on my mind. It was futile to hold back my useless blubbering and muttered swear words. I spent the rest of that evening huddled in the corner of this depressing place sobbing at the thought that I might never get back home.
The temperature dropped fairly sharply when the sun descended below the horizon. The mild breeze on my still damp clothes chilled me to my core. It was nigh-on impossible to sleep under those conditions; I just curled up as best as I could as I stared outside through the gaps in the rustling leaves and tried not to think about it.
Generally, the night outside was calm to start off with. Apart from the trees occasionally blowing in a light breeze, nothing seemed to move. That didn't remain the case, however. Later in the night, I saw a few presumably native creatures move. I couldn't make out what they were through the leaves though; they didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. They seemed to be tall light-green coloured beings of some kind; like they tried to camouflage themselves against their environment but completely missed the mark. I wasn't going to go outside and see what these things were, I'd had enough trouble for one day without going out there and being savaged by these potentially dangerous native creatures. The fact that they only seemed to appear at night set off several horror movie alarm bells in my mind. I couldn't sleep anyway so I just kept my eye on them and tried to work out what they were. Sadly, to no avail.