Part Three
It was some of the worst pain that Sawyer had felt in his life, and he was grateful for it. Pain was something that he could deal with, pain was a friend of his from way back, from before he had more than peach fuzz across his cheeks and faked a deep voice to impress the little girls. It was the still being around to feel anything at all that Sawyer was glad of. That was what was shiny and new, forged so recently that it was still too hot for him to examine as closely as he would have liked. As he lay on the sand, Sawyer wondered if there was a singular event that he would cling to mark this transition or if it had been creeping up on him for weeks, moving so slyly and subtly that he had not noticed until it had taken him, shaken him, and given him no choice.
Hearing someone moving about on the beach nearby, Sawyer opened his eyes. The sun was brilliant and vicious, zeroing in upon its new victim and doing its best to burn his eyes right out of his skull. Sawyer could not suppress his groan as he turned his face away.
Jin raised his head when he realized that Sawyer was awake and said something. The words were strung together so closely that Sawyer would not even have known he was listening to Korean if he had been hearing it for the first time, let alone have any hope of understanding it. Sawyer lifted his good arm and waved it in Jin's direction for a moment before even that movement tired him and he had to let it drop back on the sand. "Okay, okay, lay off. You could be reciting Betty Crocker recipes at me and I wouldn't know the difference." Sawyer's tongue was fat and swollen, sticking to the roof of his mouth and making even simple words difficult. He rested for a moment longer before raising his arm once more to act as a shield for his eyes so that he could see what Jin was doing.
A few pitiful scraps of the raft and the supplies that they had taken had washed back to shore with them. Jin was crouched over them, carefully separating the useless pieces from those that were salvageable. One pile was already much larger than the other. Sawyer saw a great deal of broken wood, a few pieces of soggy fruit, and-there was a God in heaven, it didn't matter if He spent most of his time kicking Sawyer in the ass, at this point Sawyer was willing to forgive him for damned near anything-three glistening bottles of water. Every cell in his body shrieked in unison upon catching sight of them, and Sawyer heard himself making a sound that he would only realize later had been pure, unfettered want. Even if his mind had had the time to keep up before he reacted, Sawyer did not think that he could have stopped the quick jerk of his body towards that water. His ribs and shoulders exploded in unison as soon as he moved, brilliant sunbursts of pain that made him cry out and shrink back on himself a moment later. Great almighty God, he would almost take being tied to that tree again if it would get rid of this. That pain had been greater in intensity, but so much shorter in duration.
Jin made a soft noise of concern and came over. Sawyer heard the sand shifting beside his head, and then Jin lifted it up and tilted the mouth of the water bottle to Sawyer's lips. His didn't respond until he tasted the first few drops of water crawling across his tongue, sinking into cracked skin and reminding it that it had once been alive. Sawyer grunted and jerked towards the bottle, unable to stop himself in spite of the pain that rolled down from the crown of his head to his kneecaps and was nearly strong enough to make him pass out. Animals could smell water from miles away, he knew, and now he knew that it was also true of humans, if they were dehydrated badly enough and all of the salt in their body had migrated into their tongue. It was a metallic scent, sharp as wire and irresistible. Sawyer grabbed at Jin's wrist to keep him from taking it away. Jin said something and pulled the bottle from Sawyer's lips only to place it back a moment later. He continued this process until Sawyer understood that he was only to drink in sips, but it was hard. He licked his lips, spat salt off to the side, and tried not to swear at Jin too much.
Jin pulled the bottle away for good after Sawyer had consumed half of the water inside, screwing the cap back on and carefully setting it to the side. His tone was comforting even though Sawyer could not understand the words. Sawyer closed his eyes, felt the sun beating down on the outsides of the lids. Memories of the night before began to float back to him in irritating fragments, never enough for him to form a coherent narrative. Sawyer winced as he tried to squirm away from the sand working its way into his shoulder from the back, replaying the way that the wound had felt seconds after he got it.
"Michael?" Sawyer asked, feeling his voice rasping in his throat. He opened his eyes long enough to see Jin shake his head before he let them fall closed again. "And the kid?" When several seconds went by without an answer, Sawyer rallied his strength enough to force his eyes open one more time and saw Jin looking confused. Sawyer fluttered his hand through the air as he tried to find the words. "Walt? Little guy, last seen in a yellow lifejacket? Kind of an argumentative little shit?"
Jin's face cleared for a moment at the mention of Walt's name, before a shadow passed over it. Sawyer's fingers convulsed in the sand, seeking the gun that had been lost in the drink along with just about every other useful thing they had. Well, he and Jin seemed to share a dim view of people who kidnapped ankle biters. A few more striking similarities like that and they would be able to star in their own buddy cop movie.
Jin spit out something that sounded fierce. Sawyer nodded in what he hoped were the right places and winced when his head pounded like an overzealous kid with his first set of drums was trapped in it. "If that was an imaginative revenge plan, then count me in, buddy." Sawyer dropped his head back onto the sand and extended his fingers in the A-OK sign. "I might just be a spectator, but it's the thought that counts." He felt Jin tugging at his shirt again, moving the fabric aside so that he could see his shoulder. "Frisky fella." It was probably a good thing that Jin did not understand English, Sawyer realized, or he might just leave Sawyer on the sand and save himself. As long as he could keep talking, though, Sawyer would know that he wasn't dead yet.
Jin's sharp intake of breath made Sawyer force his eyes open one more time. "Jesus," he breathed. A neat hole had been opened up in the meaty expanse of flesh above his collarbone, and he could feel another, less neat hole on the opposite side. The wound was still oozing blood sullenly. Sawyer was glad that it was only blood. He wasn't ready yet for that big trip that Jack had promised him while they fought over the briefcase weeks before. And that wasn't even the bad one.
Jin left Sawyer's shoulder alone and pulled his shirt up and over his ribs, grimacing as fresh blood made the fabric stick to the skin. Sawyer felt like telling Jin that he wasn't the only one feeling just a mite queasy here, but for once words failed him. The second bullet had not scored a direct hit on his side, at least, but had instead left an ugly, blood-filled furrow across the flesh before it had disappeared beneath the skin. There was a hard knot barely visible a few inches after the place where it vanished, the area around the entry wound was blackened and bruised, and Sawyer ached every time that he drew a breath. He had been in enough brawls and experienced enough broken ribs to understand now that his act of defiance against the Others had earned him a matching set, at the very least. Off of Jin's alarmed look, Sawyer muttered, "Yeah, I know. What I wouldn't give for a fully stocked medicine cabinet right now, huh?"
Jin said something and pointed to the bulge on Sawyer's ribs, where the bruises were at their most painful. Sawyer blinked rapidly as he stared at the place where the bruising was nearly as dark as his shirt, feeling as if there was something that he should be remembering. The water had been very dark…and that was it. Sawyer shivered and rubbed at the place on his jaw where Jin had socked him one. There was a bruise on Jin's chin where Sawyer had punched him first, so Sawyer supposed that he had had that one coming.
Jin caught Sawyer's eye, pointed at the place were the bullet was wedged, and made a cutting gesture through the air with his hand. Sawyer felt his eyes widen. "Uh-uh, cowboy, I don't think so." He sat up and braced his elbows in the sand so that he could scoot away. He probably would have been a lot more convincing if all but the very slowest of movements was not making him sick to his stomach. "We don't have a knife and you ain't the doc, got it? So let's leave the field medicine to the movies." He gestured towards the supplies that Jin had managed to salvage from the wreck, then at the rapidly sinking sun. "We should start heading back towards camp if we're gonna." Even though a drop of alcohol had not passed Sawyer's lips since Boone had died, he still felt heavy and drunk. He hoped that Jin didn't mind hauling just a little bit farther.
Jin nodded in understanding of the gesture, at least, and said something that Sawyer decided to interpret as the Korean version of, "Man, you're messed up." "You don't know the half of it, buddy." He watched as Jin bundled up in their small supplies in the remains of a shirt so torn that Sawyer didn't know which one of them that it had originally belonged to. Jin left one of the sleeves dangling free so that he could throw the bundle over his shoulder like children did with their books in old movies. When that was arranged to his satisfaction, Jin stood and extended his free hand to help Sawyer back to his feet. Sawyer gripped back with his right hand, already gritting his teeth against the extra special fun ride that he already knew he was in for.
Jin tugged Sawyer up to his feet much faster than Sawyer had been prepared for. Two nuclear bombs went off in swift succession against Sawyer's ribs: the first when he stood, the second when he staggered and banged into Jin's side. Sawyer set his teeth together hard enough to make his jaw creak and refused to make any more than the softest, most guttural of sounds. Hell, if he started yelping every time that he was hurt at this point he would never shut up.
Jin said something in a worried voice as he took Sawyer's good arm and placed it around his shoulders. Sawyer shrugged and then closed his eyes as that did not prove to be one of the smartest moves that he could have made. "Sure thing, Kemosabe. Aspirin and a cheeseburger sounds great right about now." He leaned heavily upon Jin as they started off, only balking when he realized that Jin was taking them into the looming jungle. Call him crazy, but he had the sneaking suspicion that the place with a reputation for eating people was not the place for him to be while he was still leaking blood from fresh wounds.
Jin stopped when Sawyer did and made a face suggesting that he was trying very hard to maintain his patience, but Sawyer was making it more difficult than he had anticipated. Well, good for Jin. If they used this nightmare to learn and grow and sing 'Kum By Yah', then Sawyer would know that they had entered the Twilight Zone with no hope of ever coming out again.
And speaking of the strange and unlikely…Sawyer frowned as a fragment of memory flitted through his brain, moving quickly and refusing to stand still so that he could get a good look at it. Whole damned night was filled with gaps like that, like pages torn out of a book, and he was only glad that he could still put the beginning and ending of the story together well enough to get the basic gist. Others? Bad news. Walt? Gone. Situation? From where he was standing, all fucked up.
Sawyer fought back an impulse to rub at his ankle, which made no sense at all, and muttered, "But sharks don't act like that," which at least did. Maybe. If he tilted his head to the side and squinted at it just right.
Jin was still staring at him, his expression growing more irritated with every passing second. He said something that involved relatively few syllables and a great number of consonants before he pointed first at the beach, then at the jungle, and finally up to the sun itself. Sawyer wasn't getting it. He hoped that the misunderstanding rested in the fact that he was so far gone at this point that even with Jin's help he was still swaying on his feet.
Jin repeated the gestures first once, then again. "Oh," Sawyer said as he finally made the connection. The sun. They were probably already a nicely charred pair as it was, and only hurting so badly from everything else that they had not had time to notice yet. Sawyer still wasn't sure that he wanted to trade in a nice bronzed glow for the chance to be eviscerated, but he figured that it was a good idea to let the man who still had a full seven pints of blood in him make the decisions.
Jin led them into the shadowy trees, where they stayed deep enough under the foliage to avoid becoming burned any further but still close enough to the beach to use it as their guide. Sawyer sure hoped that Jin knew what he was doing, because he had never seen this stretch of coastline before. It was a big damned island, after all, and they had all been so fixated upon rescue that they had barely stirred from the little stretch of earth running from the beach up to the caves.
Sawyer glanced towards Jin, who had his eyes cast downwards and his face set into lines of deep concentration, clearly not in the mood for conversation even if there had not been a language barrier between them. He would just have to rely on Jin's better judgment as much as he was relying on Jin's legs, then. Never mind that having to be dependent upon anyone for this length of time at a stretch was playing havoc on his nerves when he all that he really wanted to do was lay his body down on the earth and sleep.
'Get to Jack,' Sawyer told himself, turning it into a mental sing-song. Children's nursery rhymes were always the easiest to remember, always the bizarre little songs that stayed after everything else had been stripped away. 'Get to Jack, get to Jack, get to Jack.' He would carry that closer than any fairytale story, he would let it fuel him forward and he would not wonder when those words had acquired such power. Get to Jack, and don't worry that the Others might have killed him and everyone else at the camp by the time that Sawyer and Jin made it back. Get to Jack, and don't think about the creepy-nasties that were probably already crawling around in those brand new wounds. Get to Jack, and don't worry about when he had started caring about living and dying at all, rather than only worrying about whether or not it was prolonged.
Get to Jack, and don't dare let his mind turn towards how deeply, how powerfully, he had failed that kid. Sawyer shuddered to think of what could be happening to Walt now.
Get to Jack, and…get to Jack.
Sawyer once again froze in his tracks. Jin, having learned from the last time that Sawyer had tried that trick, kept tugging him inexorably forward until Sawyer came back to reality and began walking on his own again. The same sense of unshakeable duty that had driven Jin and Michael to build a raft from nothing would not allow him to leave someone behind now. Sawyer hated being turned into a project as much as he always had, but at the moment there was not a whole heaping load that he could do about it. Sawyer exhaled through his nose and focused all of his energy on putting one foot in front of the other, struggling to keep the pain down to a low enough level so that he would not pass out. Let that epiphany sit dormant right where it was until he had the energy to deal with it again.
Sawyer wheezed out a laugh that earned him another worried look from Jin. Yeah, he kept piling those things up, didn't he? Maybe if he survived long enough to get back to the camp he would be in traction long enough to finally sort through all of them.
Sawyer thought of the Others and how easily they had carted off Walt. If there was still a camp to return to, anyway.
He was still digesting that cheerful thought when the ground began to rumble beneath his feet. A metallic sound that made Sawyer think of county fairs and summer days began to rumble through the air. He hung his head down between his shoulder blades and laughed as hard as his cracked ribs would allow. Jin hissed something at him that Sawyer figured translated to roughly, "Shut up, you damned fool," until Sawyer forced himself to stop snickering and be silent again. Of course that thing would show up now, what else could possibly make the adventure any more perfect?
The clanking grew louder. Sawyer really doubted that there was going to be cotton candy and carnival rides when that critter arrived. He threw a longing look back towards the open beach, but Jin dragged them quickly down into the protective growth that covered the forest floor. So wide open spaces were ruled out. Got it. Sawyer didn't see how cowering in the thing's hunting grounds was going to do them any favors, but what the hell. Jin wasn't the one so tired and battered that he was having trouble keeping his thoughts going in one straight line.
"Been a while since we've heard from that nasty, anyway," Sawyer muttered. "Probably long overdue for a visit." Jin shook his head at him, and Sawyer drew his finger across his lips in a quick zipping gesture. He was still leaking enough blood to serve as a neon beacon to every predator within a ten-mile radius, but sure, he would play the quiet game if that was what Jin wanted.
They shrank back into the ferns, and Sawyer hoped like hell that the undergrowth was lush enough to keep them camouflaged. They were sure out of places to run if it wasn't, though Sawyer supposed that they could always pray for it not to be hungry. The metallic noise had become so loud by that point that it was making Sawyer's ears rib and his head throb, but it also made him realize that he had never heard the monster at so close a range before. When not being filtered across a distance of several miles, it didn't sound like it was coming from any living animal at all. More to the point, the closer it got the more it also sounded like it was coming from a place low to the ground. For a monster that from all accounts was known to habitually rip trees from the ground and throw them at people, Sawyer thought that was pretty damned interesting.
He raised his brows at Jin, who stared back at him with widened eyes. Nothing like this had ever happened near the camp. Even with their piss-poor communications skills, this news would have torn through them at wildfire speed. Sawyer inched further back into the undergrowth, trying along with Jin to make himself as small and unobtrusive as possible.
Get to Jack, and let him know that crazy didn't cover half of the things that had been going on on the island since they had crashed.
It buzzed. Sawyer cocked his head to one side and felt his eyebrows drawing together. The last time that he had heard a noise like that, he had been very young and still living in his aunt's house. It had been a blistering summer day, the kind where even the air was too lethargic to move. Lisa had been shuffling about in the kitchen as she tried to find something for dinner that didn't involve heat or even effort in any appreciable way, Oren had already been half-drunk on the couch, and Sawyer had been listlessly playing with his Legos on the living room rug, jerking away whenever Oren realized that he was a daddy now and tried to paternally ruffle his hair. There had come a buzzing in all the vents of the house at the same time, loud enough to drive Lisa from the kitchen in fright at the same time that Oren had jumped up from the couch. Lisa had tried to pull Sawyer-still James, then-to her, but even at that age he had had little use for comforting.
It wasn't until Sawyer's hand began to ache that he realized he was on the verge of cutting his palms open with his own fingernails, so tightly were his hands clenched into fists. And the moral of that fun little trip down memory lane? The neighbor down the road had run a couple of commercial beehives out of his backyard until his kids got to horsing around one day and smashed one of them. Homeless and desperate to escape the heat, the bees had swarmed over to Lisa and Oren's house, climbed down inside the walls, and decided that they liked it there just fine. It had taken three visits from an exterminator and two screaming matches with the neighbor to get rid of them again.
But they had made a sound exactly like that.
"I know what it is," Sawyer whispered, so stunned that he could barely get the words out. Jin shook his head at him in warning.
The buzzing and the clanking grew louder in unison, until Sawyer was at long last able to get his first real glimpse of the thing that had kept them all running scared ever since they had first taken their nosedive into this godforsaken place. It wasn't ripping up trees or throwing bodies through the air, so Sawyer figured that this was a good start. He also figured that he and the other castaways couldn't call the monster an 'it' any longer nearly so much as they needed to start calling it a 'they'. It, they, hell, Sheila if that's what made the thing happy, was a swarm of small monsters that collectively came to be about the same size as a city bus. Individually…Jin began to lean forward for a better look, making the ferns beneath him rustle, and Sawyer grabbed at his shoulder to haul him back. Sawyer squinted for a better view. Individually, he'd guess that they were each about the size of his thumb, but he wasn't brimming over with enthusiasm to creep close and take formal measurements. The little monsters were too far away for Sawyer to see if they were animals or some twisted kind of machine, but at this point he was pretty sure that the clanking and the buzzing were coming from two separate sources. When the swarm dove down an opening in the jungle floor that hadn't been there before and definitely was no longer there a second later, Sawyer was sure of it.
He and Jin remained in hiding for several minutes after the noise was gone, trusting the silence even less than they had the sound. Sawyer at long last exhaled a breath that he had not realized he was holding, turning his head to the place where the monster had been. Even if he was to get up and poke at the earth he wasn't certain that he would be able to find the opening, so perfectly was it hidden. More importantly, after seeing and hearing about what those things were capable of when they were working together, Sawyer wasn't sure that he wanted to until he had a lot more in the way of backup.
"Okay, then," he said at long last. "That's a message worth carrying back, ain't it?"
Jin helped him up to his feet so that they could soldier on.
End Part Three
