Stranded
Chapter Four: Danietta Coleman
Danietta carried her load of luggage to the designated spot in the sand and dumped them onto the growing heap. Cleaning out the plane of anything useful was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done. The survivors had organized themselves into groups, taking turns at the various tasks. Now Danietta was helping to gather all the luggage so that it could be gone through, and organized.
"Would you like a drink?" a voice asked from behind. Danietta turned to see pregnant Blayr offering a bottle of water.
"Thanks," she said as she took the bottle and swallowed a mouthful of the tepid water. Blayr smiled.
"It's the least I could do, since I can't carry anything heavy."
"Do you mind if I ask if Daddy was on the plane?" Danietta asked, nodding towards her hefty tummy.
"No, he wasn't," Blayr said with a vague smile. "We're divorced."
"Oh," Danietta said, unsure of what to say next. Blayr sat down on the edge of a large rock.
"I guess I could start to sort some of the clothes," she said, sliding down so that she was sitting in the sand beside the large pile of luggage. As someone slung a few more bags onto the mound, a small case fell down into Blayr's lap. "What's this?" she said to herself. She picked up the case and unzipped the cover.
"Oh my goodness," Danietta said, looking down to match Blayr's astonished look with a faked one of her own. Seven diamonds glinted in the bright sunlight. Blayr looked up, scanning the shore for Lt. Sloan. He was nearby, helping five other men to carry a large heavy piece of metal that had once been one of the plane's wings. They were attempting to build some kind of shelter for the people in Joyce's triage. Blayr re-fastened the zipper on the case and struggled to her feet.
"Steve?" she called, catching her balance against the big rock, and then picking up her pace to catch up with the cop.
Danietta walked back towards the plane for more luggage, the nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach growing steadily larger.
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Danietta hung just inches above the glass showcase. Inside were the Seven Deadly Sins, famous diamonds of Russia. And soon they would have them. Slowly she sprayed the aerosol can onto the glass, and within seconds, it crumbled like stale bread.
Danietta carefully avoided the lasers as she put the jewels into a tiny case. Gluttony, Anger, Pride, Envy, Avarice, Lust, and last, but certainly no least, Sloth, she thought, slipping each into its own little compartment. She pocketed the case and tugged twice on the rope that had lowered her down. Swiftly, yet carefully, she was lifted up, and out of the skylight she had come in.
Danietta had two partners in crime: her husband, JakeColeman, and Frank Kelter. Danietta was the lightest of the three, which was why she was the one to be slowly lowered into the museum in a harness.
"Alright, let's see them," Frank demanded.
"Later," Jake hissed. "We need to get out of here."
"I don't think you understand," Frank said, taking a gun out from his waistband. He pointed it at Jake. His pleading eyes told Danietta not to hand over the booty. But she reached out her arm nonetheless.
"You tra-" Jake began, but he was silenced mid-sentence. Frank turned, grinning.
"You didn't have to do that," Danietta said, her eyes involuntarily filling with tears.
"Well, Princess," Frank said sassily, "If it's any consolation, you and Jakey are about to be reunited." She ducked as the gun went off, dodging the bullet. She ran. She didn't know how she did it, but Danietta eventually got down to the street. She could hear Frank's breath and the pounding of his feet as he tried desperately to catch up. Danietta saw her chance. She ducked into an alley, and hid behind a dumpster.
She sucked in her breath as she heard Frank's footsteps coming around the large trash bin.
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Danietta woke from her nightmare with a start. This dream had been reoccurring steadily for the past few days, since the night of the robbery.
Earlier she had decided to follow Blayr and stick close to the diamonds. Steve Sloan had met up with theses jewels before, during a case where a woman was determined to have all seven jewels in her possession at once. She had stolen them from an auction, but then sent them back to the police.
Steve took the diamonds and strapped the small case to his belt loop, so that they would dangle at his side all day.
"Right now, our number one concern is surviving here," he had said. "When we are rescued, I will turn them over to the police, and let someone else deal with it."
But that idea was not alright with Danietta. She had to get them back. If Steve had them, Frank would find him, and then he would make another widow in the world.
She had to get them back.
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Danietta realized with horror that she still had the little black case with the Seven Deadly Sins inside. She crouched down farther behind the dumpster. When she sensed Frank's footsteps had passed, she darted out from behind the dumpster, making a break for the street. But her foot caught on a box of tin cans, and they clattered onto the pavement. Frank turned and shot without looking.
Danietta cried out in pain, but she kept running. Soon she lost the sound of Frank's feet behind her. She wandered around all day on foot, hiding from any man that even vaguely resembled Frank.
In the late afternoon, she walked into the airport. She used her credit card to buy a plane ticket, and then she bought a first aid kit, which she took into the bathroom. In one of the stalls, she pulled down the baby-changing table and set down her supplies. As she rolled up her sleeve, she was glad to see that it was only a grazing. Using the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a warm, damp rag, she carefully cleaned and bandaged her wound, concentrating on the raw flesh, trying in vain to keep her mind off of her husband.
But she broke down in tears nonetheless.
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Danietta heard Steve stir in his sleep. The case lay just above his head. She maneuvered herself onto a large rock, and hung down over him. She reached down slowly and picked up the case.
Danietta almost made it away, but as she crept out of the small campsite, she knocked into Hope's bed, shaking it slightly. The baby's cries carried loudly into the night, but Danietta continued to make her getaway. She quickly made her way back to the spot where she had been sleeping and crawled back underneath her blanket, pretending not to be awake. After the baby fell back asleep, Danietta rolled over onto her side, back to the other survivors.
Slowly she unzipped the case, revealing the Seven Deadly Sins that were sparkling in the light that the signal fire cast. Suddenly she slammed the cover back down, frustrated with the memories that the jewels brought up. Her body convulsed as a sob escaped her lips. Danietta gasped for breath as she ran out of the reach of the fire's glow and kept on going for yards until she collapsed in the sand.
She didn't stop crying until the dawn's light touched the corners of the eastern sky. Danietta looked up from the ground to the ocean. She could only think of one way to stop the painful memories of her husband's death; she had to be completely rid of the jewels. She carefully stood up and dusted the sand from her clothes, then picked up the little black case. She lifted it above her head, and just as she was about to release it into the ocean, she felt a hand grip her arm solidly.
"You have a lot of explaining to do," Steve said. Danietta hung her head. Joyce and Steve were standing behind her. "What did you do?" Steve's natural cop tone was coming out. The simple conversation was turning into an interrogation.
"I didn't kill anyone. I've never even held a gun."
"No one said anything about a gun." Joyce noted.
"How did you get these jewels?" Steve said, more firmly this time. Tears formed in the woman's eyes as she looked up to the sky and back down at him quickly.
"There was this man," Danietta started. "His name is Frank Kelter. He is a gangster and a professional thief. My brother-in-law got my husband into a-" Danietta paused here, searching for the right words. "A big mess, and he had to work it off, or be killed. Frank took me too, as collateral, I guess. He had a job in Tokyo, so we went there; we took the jewels. But Frank got greedy. He was just using us. He killed Jake. Then he tried to kill me too.
"I got away, but not without this," she said, pulling up her sleeve to reveal a large bandage. "It's only a grazing."
"You should let me look at that," Joyce said softly. "It might get infected."
"If that's what really happened, then why keep it so secret?" Steve demanded.
"I don't know what happened to Frank. But I escaped and I know that he will find me. I'm not going to let him hurt anyone else."
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"Flight 314, Tokyo to Los Angeles, now boarding all rows," a stewardess called over the loudspeaker. Danietta wiped the tears from her eyes and looked once more in the bathroom mirror. She had changed into a dress, black with blue flowers, which she had purchased in a gift shop. She quickly pulled her hair out of the braid that had pulled it out of her eyes. It fell in wavy brown curls around her face. Danietta looked very little like the girl who had help Frank Kelter steal the Seven Deadly Sins the night before.
She put her things into a shoulder bag and went to show her ticket to the boarding stewardess.
Soon she was in her seat. Looking around her, she saw a pregnant woman, hand resting on her stomach. She had headphones planted over her ears and as she paged through a magazine, she seemed to be ignoring the young man in the seat beside her. A tall man filed past with his teenage daughter.
"Are you sure Freddie and the other cats will be alright, Daddy?" she heard the girl ask. But the father's response did not reach her ears. A young woman with two blond braids draping down her back sat three rows in front of Danietta. She looked bored as she chewed gum and stared ahead.
Danietta kept looking for Frank. She felt sure that he was there somewhere.
A man sat down beside her. He was tall, with dark curly hair.
"I'm Stuart Thatcher," he said. Danietta stretched out her hand with a half-smile. The man ignored it, and continued to talk although she showed no sign of listening. "I guess we're traveling buddies, eh? Well, you can just let me be, and I won't bug you."
"What?" Danietta said, startled from her thoughts. Stuart looked at her, expectantly. "Oh, uh, sure," she said.
"Good," the man said, satisfied that he would be left to himself. Danietta turned back to surveying the people around her. After take off, she stood from her seat, climbed over Stuart, and walked up to the bathroom, to give her an excuse to look around the rest of the plane. Finally, assured that Frank was not aboard, she returned to her seat, ignored her neighbor's comments about sitting still, reclined a few inches, and, for the first time in days, fell into a deep sleep.
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Steve took his suitcase and walked into the jungle. He found a secluded spot and buried the case. Inside he had put his gun, badge, and the case with the seven diamonds. He put the key in his wallet, and put that in his pocket.
Danietta smiled at him as he returned to the camp. Dusk was falling as she sat with Joyce and Ellen near a fire. Hope was asleep in a nest of towels beside Ellen, who was writing on a pad of paper.
"What's going on?" Steve asked, sitting down.
"People are settling in for the night," Joyce said with a small smile. Steve sighed heavily, but smiled up at the woman.
"Doctors," he said, as if the one word explained everything.
"We need to find the flight manifest," Ellen said. "Tomorrow we're going to work on figuring out how many people are alive, and exactly how many… didn't make it."
"Once we have that number we can start planning out shelters and figure out exactly how much food we need. The whole thing would be much easier if we had the manifest," Danietta said thoughtfully. Steve looked up at the large shell of the plane.
"The whole front part of the plane is missing," he said simply.
"See, I told you he was a super-sleuth," Ellen smiled.
"We need to figure out how many are dead before we burn the bodies," Joyce said. The other four looked up at her, startled at her train of thought. But when they studied the problem, they knew the doctor was right. Burial was not the answer. Aside from taking too long, it would invite wild animals to come and dig up the bodies. And just leaving them to rot in the plane was too inhumane.
"The others are not going to like this," Danietta said, her voice almost a whisper. "They still don't know that no one is coming."
"We all have to deal with it," Joyce said pointedly. "But it will take at least a few days to figure out who is who. We can't do anything with the bodies until then."
"I think I could speed the process," Danietta said. "What if I went to look for the cockpit?"
"I don't think it's a good idea for any of us to be out wandering alone," Joyce said.
"Well then I'll form a search party," Danietta insisted.
"What will you tell them, you're looking for the manifest so that we can burn the bodies?"
"There was a transceiver or a radio or something, wasn't there?" Ellen asked.
"Yes, but the co-pilot was adamant that it's beyond repair," Steve pointed out.
"But that's not public knowledge," Danietta said. "We'll get it, bring it back, and then say it won't work. And who knows? Maybe there's someone here who could fix it."
"The manifest would make the work of days take a couple hours, tops," Joyce noted.
"I don't like it," Steve said finally, "but I'll go."
"I will too," Ellen offered.
"No," Steve said flatly. "You're still weak. Besides, someone has to watch Hope."
"And watch over the others," Joyce added. "I'm going too."
A/N: That was a quick update for me. I am glad people are liking this. I am working on the next chapter(almost done), titled "Joyce Walters." I had writers block on this for a long time, but then I decided to add the Amanda chapter the other day, and it just started flowing.
After Joyce I think I'll either do Blayr or Jesse. Maybe Mark. I haven't quite decided.
If you like it, please keep on reading, and reviewing.