The sound of loud rummaging coming from the fuselage woke Lena up immediately. Her fellow crash survivors were also rudely awakened by the growling and rummaging.
"What is that?" Lena asked groggily, sitting up and slowly making her way over to the remains of the plane.
"Someone's in there." Claire replied.
"Everyone in there is dead." Sayid said.
"Sawyer." Jack sighed. For the past few days, Sawyer had been taking supplies and other things from the plane and wreckage. He had also been taking things from the dead bodies, but Lena didn't really want to get into that.
"Right behind you, jackass." Sawyer said. Jack looked genuinely surprised.
Jack pulled out a flashlight and shed some light on the plane. Sawyer smirked and pulled out a bigger flashlight and shined it right into the fuselage.
They were met with the snarling face of an animal.
"Oh shit." Lena muttered.
"Run!" Jack exclaimed. Lena bolted as the animal charged, running as far away as she could. The animal tore through the camp, knocking down people and objects alike. At some point, two other animals joined it, and all three of them ran into the jungle.
"What the bloody hell was that?!" Charlie shouted once he was sure everyone was alright.
"Boars."
Lena turned to see who had spoken. It was the bald man with a cut running down his face. He actually looked happy about the fact that the boars had invaded the camp. And, judging by the look on his face, he had a plan.
…
After the whole boar fiasco, they had to figure out what to do with the bodies, for that was certainly what attracted the animals to the fuselage.
"We have to get rid of the bodies somehow." Lena said as Jack was stitching up a cut given to Charlie by the boars.
"What should we do?" Charlie asked. "Bury them? There's a whole bunch in there."
"More than twenty." Sayid, who was also there, answered. "And digging graves will be difficult, especially without shovels."
"We need to burn them." Jack said quietly.
"They're people!" Kate, who had been mostly silent thought the whole conversation, said. Lena had been thinking that as well. Burning them just didn't seem right.
"I know they're people, Kate." Jack sighed. "But do you want them to get eaten by wild animals? Because that's what will happen. Any bodies we bury are not going to stay buried for long. I know it seems harsh, but we can't to honor them all. They're gone and we're not."
"What you said may be true, but it's nor right for us to decide how these people are laid to rest." Sayid argued. "No regards for their wishes? Their religions?"
"We don't have time to sort out everybody's goal."
"Really, last I heard we were positively made of time." Charlie remarked. Lena cracked a small grin. She could appreciate Charlie's sense of humor, as it was very similar to her own.
"Look, I'm not happy about it either, but we crashed a thousand miles off course, and they're looking for us in the wrong place." Jack said. "Tomorrow morning, we need to turn that fuselage into a furnace. Wait until the sun goes down, and then start the fire." With that, he exited the tent. And, as much as Lena hated it, she understood why they needed to burn the bodies. And, the fire would be so high and bright that someone might actually see it and come rescue them.
…
When Lena heard the loud shouting, she simply sighed. Couldn't these people not fight each other for one minute?!
She jogged over to the source of the noise, still extremely annoyed and saw Sawyer (no surprise there) in a heated brawl with Hurley. Lena wasn't expecting the latter to get into a fight, but then again, Sawyer could probably make anyone turn to violence.
"Hey, what's going on?" Of course, it was Jack.
"He's hoarding the last of the peanuts!" Hurley accused, pointing at Sawyer. The last of them?
"From my own stash." Sawyer argued.
"What about the rest of the food?" Jack asked, sounding just as exasperated as he looked.
"There is no more food, dude." Hurley said sheepishly. "We kind of… at it all."
"What?" Lena and a few other people exclaimed at the same time. How were they out of food? They had been rationing it… hadn't they?
Well, Lena thought. Apparently not.
"Okay, everyone calm down." Sayid said. "We can still find food. There are plenty of things on this island we can use for sustenance."
"Oh yeah?" Sawyer asked, sitting down on one of the discarded airplane seats. "And you exactly are we going to find this sustenance?"
There was a loud whooshing noise, and a knife sailed though the air, landing inches from Sawyer's head.
Lena spun on her heels to see that the person who threw the knife was the bald man who had identified the boars earlier.
"We hunt." He said simply to a shell-shocked Sawyer. Lena had to admit, it gave her a little bit of satisfaction to see Sawyer like that. But her satisfaction was overshadowed by her worry about whoever that guy was.
"How did you get that knife on the plane?" Kate asked as Jack pulled it out of the seat.
"I checked it."
"You either have very good aim, or very bad aim, Mr…" Jack trailed off as he handed the knife back. Lena, for one, hoped that it was a case of very good aim. Otherwise, this guy might be trying to kill them all. And even Sawyer didn't deserve to be stabbed.
"Locke." Michael piped up bitterly. "His name is Locke."
"Alright, Mr. Locke." Jack said. "What is it that we're hunting?"
"We know there are wild boar on the island." Locke began. "Razorbacks, by the look of them. The ones that came into the camp last night were piglets, 100, 150 pounds each. Which means that there's a mother nearby. A 250 pound rat, with scimitar-like tusks, and a surly disposition, who'd love nothing more than to eviscerate anything that comes near. Boar's usual mode of attack is to circle around and charge from behind so I figure it'll take at least three of us to distract her long enough for me to flank one of the piglets, pin it, and slit its throat."
What. The. Fuck?
Lena gaped at him, even though she barely understood what he just said. How the hell did he know all this stuff?
"And you gave him his knife back?" Sawyer muttered to Jack. For once, Lena agreed with him.
"Do you have a better idea?" Jack replied.
"Better than you wandering into the magic forest to bag a hunk of ham with a tiny hunting knife?" Sawyer said. "Hell no, that's the best idea I've ever heard."
In response to this, Locke opened his case, which was full of all kinds of knives.
"What the actual hell?" Lena whispered. So many questions were spinning in her head at the moment, and she could barely comprehend them all.
"Who is this guy?" Hurley asked.
…
Lena hadn't been chosen to go hunting, but she took a knife anyways. She knew how to use it, and it couldn't hurt to have one. No one seemed to mind it, anyways.
"What do you need with a knife?" A voice asked. It was Charlie, who had walked over to where Lena was sitting.
"Protection." Lena replied with a shrug. "It's won't do much against that tree-uprooting monster, but it'll be useful against boars. And people."
Charlie looked slightly disturbed at the mention of people, but he shook it off and continued.
"Do you know how to fish?" He asked. It seemed as though he came over to ask this very question, and had been nervously and awkwardly waiting for an opportunity.
"Um… no." Lena said. "Why do you need to fish?"
"Well, I, uh, told someone I could fish." He explained. "But I can't."
"Sorry, but I've never been fishing." Lena said.
"Yeah, well, thanks anyways." Charlie grumbled. "Have you ever heard of Drive Shaft?"
"Is that the 'You All Everybody' band?" Lena asked. Charlie nodded happily. "That song is so weirdly catchy."
"Thank you." Charlie said. "I'm the bass player. And I write the songs."
"Oh, that's cool." Lena commented. Charlie grinned and walked off to find someone who could fish, humming 'You All Everybody' merrily.
Great, Lena thought. Now it's stuck in my head.
…
Later that night, as the fuselage was burning, Claire held a memorial service for everyone who had died in the crash.
The people who had gone hunting had managed to get a boar, and the survivors happily ate that for dinner. For the first time, everything seemed to be in order.
For one night, the island was at peace
A/N:Hello everyone! I am officially making a new update schedule for Adrift. Now, not only will I be posting a new chapter every Friday, I will be posting one every Sunday as well. Thank you for reading!