"Hey Hurley? Have they phoned home yet?" I ask him, worried about Charlie and Desmond.
"Hold on, I'll check." He pulls the walkie up to his mouth. "Jack? You there dude? Beach to Jack, come in Jack. Beach to Jack."
"Right here, Hurley, what's up?" Jack answers.
"Hey. Did you guys make it to that radio tower thingy yet?"
"Yeah, and I talked to the people on the boat, they're on their way to pick us up right now."
"Seriously? It worked?" Hurley asks, looking at me, not daring to get too hopeful.
"Seriously, we're all on the way back to the beach right now, so you better pack your bags buddy."
"Hahaha!" Hurley laughs, hugging me around the shoulders. "Dude that's great! Woohoo!"
I walk back over to the group. "What do you say, Bazooka Jane?" Sawyer says to me, holding two DHARMA beer cans. "How 'bout we toast this momentous occasion?"
"Is that the stuff from the pallet or the stuff you guys found in the jungle?" I ask.
"Pallet," he says, tossing me a can. I catch it and open it, the rank smell coming out of the tap. It's warm and flat, but it's beer. Sawyer gets closer and we clank our cans. I look out to the water and see Hurley do a cannonball into the ocean as Bernard chuckles at him and I smile, happy that we finally have something to celebrate.
But in the distance, I see the outrigger canoe that Karl lent Charlie and Desmond to go to the Looking Glass station.
But I only see one person in it.
Sawyer sees him too and we run to the outrigger. Everyone else runs up to him, and Hurley gets out of the water. "Are you alright Desmond?" Sayid asks him, pulling the outrigger to shore.
"We need to get to Jack," Des says frantically. "We can't let him get in touch with that boat."
"Easy, Scottie, everything's cool, boat's on the way." Sawyer tells him.
"What? On the way? No," Des exclaims, starting to panic.
"Hey where's Charlie?" Hurley asks, but he's ignored.
"No that woman, Naomi, she lied. The people on the boat aren't who they say they are!"
"What are you talking about, Des?" I ask.
"Then who are they?" asks Sawyer.
"Desmond, where's Charlie?" I hear Hurley ask again.
Des ignores him and answers us first. "I don't know but we need to get in touch with Jack, now!"
"It's alright," Juliet says. 'We can call him, we have a walkie. It's okay."
"Where is it? Get it," Des tells her.
"Where's Charlie?!" Hurley shouts and we all look over at him.
Desmond just shakes his head. "I'm, I'm sorry brother. I...," but he can't finish the sentence.
He doesn't have to. We know from his tone that Charlie is gone.
We stand in silence for about a minute. I turn back to Desmond. We need to get back on track. "Desmond, how do you know these people aren't who they say they are?"
"Charlie was in the communication room with the blinking yellow light. The station wasn't flooded like we thought it was. He turned off the switch and there must have been a transmission trying to come through and Charlie opened the channel and Penny was on the other line. She didn't know who Naomi was and she doesn't have a boat."
"So you talked to her?" I ask.
"No, only Charlie. He shut himself up in the room. Our mate with the eye patch—,"
"Mikhail?" Sayid asks bitterly. "Locke killed Mikhail."
"Well, he didn't do a very good job then, brother, because he blew himself up with a grenade. Charlie was in the room and the porthole busted open and he drowned."
"But you said you never spoke to Penny. How do you know all of this?" I ask.
"Charlie wrote on his hand 'not Penny's boat'. Showed it to me through the window of the door."
"That's it," Sawyer says, picking up the walkie. "Look, we gotta call the Doc."
"Did you listen to Desmond?" Sayid says. "Charlie wrote on his hand."
"Look I'm sorry he's dead. But I don't even know what the hell 'not Penny's boat' means."
"Calling Jack accomplishes nothing," Sayid says.
"It would accomplish warning him," Juliet argues.
"It also means warning the people on the freighter that we're suspicious of them. I've no doubt they're monitoring our communications, if we call Jack—,"
"You know what? I got the walkie, I'm making the call," Sawyer says, pushing the talk button. But Hurley grabs it from his hand before he can say anything. "Hey!" he exclaims.
Hurley chucks the walkie into the sea and we all stare at him. "We better get going," he says, heading for his pack.
"Going where?" Sawyer yells.
His comment is ignored as we all head over to our supplies. The guns have already been divvied up and I got the glock. I check to see if it's loaded and I add a few bullets to the magazine.
"What the hell's gotten into you, Hugo?" Sawyer asks Hurley. "They'll all be back in the morning, if you just wait."
"You don't wait with warnings dude, you warn."
Sawyer picks up his rifle and slings it up on his shoulder. "And here I was thinking I was gonna get a good night's sleep."
We walk for a few hours and night falls soon, covering us in darkness, except for the torches me manage to light. And it takes a while before I notice something was wrong.
"Guys, where's Hurley?" I ask. Sayid stops at the head of the group and turns his head, as do Juliet, Sawyer, Bernard, Jin, and Desmond.
"Hurley!" Sayid yells, but there's no response. "We can't find him in the dark," he says.
We walk a little bit further and we come up to a large piece of place wreckage. "What is this?" Bernard asks.
"It's the cockpit of the plane," I say, noticing the front window and the large brown stain of blood there from when the pilot, Seth Norris was ripped from the inside by the monster on our second day here.
We hear a shuffling of underbrush from behind us and we raise our guns. Hurley comes out of the jungle, followed by John Locke, carrying a torch. "Where the hell have you been, Hugo?" Sawyer asks him.
"Sorry, I was just um... I got lost," Hurley says
"What are you doing here?" I say to Locke, not lowering my gun.
"I came here for the same reason you did, to warn Jack about the people on that boat. I already gave it a shot, but, I figured I might have better luck with some support."
"You want our support?" Sayid asks him, his gun on Locke as well. "You can tell me why you destroyed that submarine."
Locke is about to answer when we hear voiced behind us. We turn and the rest of our group is there, the ones who went to the radio tower. Sun and Jin find each other, as do Rose and Bernard. Hurley walks up to Claire, who is craning her neck, looking for Charlie. "He's dead," Hurley says to her, his voice breaking out in tears. "Charlie's dead."
Claire starts to cry and Hurley holds her and Aaron in his arms as they weep for their friend. "What, what happened?" she asks, choking out the words. "I mean, how, how did he…?"
"He was trying to help us," Hurley says.
I notice Rousseau in the large group of castaways, holding a rope that ties the hands of Ben together. It's the first time I've seen him since the hatch. Since he lied to me and told me his name was Henry Gale. Then Sayid, Ana Lucia, Charlie, and I had caught him in the act and tried to get the truth, but he just tried to cover up with more lies. His face is beaten bloody, similar to the last time I saw him, but this blood is fresh.
I see Jack advance towards my group, but his destination is Locke and he punches him in the face. Jack knocks him to the ground and Locke pulls out a pistol and the two struggle for it. But Jack gets it in his grasp and points it at Locke's head, cocking the chamber.
"Jack!" Juliet protests.
"You're not gonna shoot me, Jack," Locke says. "Not any more than I was gonna shoot—,"
But he's cut off as Jack pulls the trigger. But it doesn't work. No bullet comes out. "It's not loaded," Locke explains.
Jack makes to attack him with his fists, but Sawyer and Sayid intervene, pulling Jack off of Locke.
"Let go of me!" Jack yells. "Do you know what he did?"
"Yes, I know what he did!" Sayid shouts.
Locke stands up and starts to explain. "All I did, all I have ever done, has been in the best interest of all of us."
"Are you insane?" Jack yells at him
"I know I have a lot of explaining to do. But, I never did anything to hurt any of you. I even risked my life to tell you there was a traitor in your midst," he says, pointing to Juliet.
"She helped us, John. All you ever did was blow up every chance we had of getting off of this island. You killed Naomi." I turn back to Locke. I was going to forgive him for defecting to the Others and leaving me helpless in their Barracks, but now, not only has he destroyed Sayid's communication equipment and blown up the submarine, he's killed the one person who could get us off the Island.
I realize Charlie said that this isn't Penny's boat. I don't know why these people are here, but they have a boat and they have a way off of this damned Island.
"Well, technically," Ben says. "He didn't kill her, yet."
"Yes, he did," Kate says, coming out of the jungle. "She just died. She didn't give you up, John. She covered for us, and she fixed this." She hands the satellite phone to Jack. "They're on their way."
"She didn't cover for anyone," Locke says. "She wants her people to come here. And trust me, when they do we had better be far away from here. I'm going to the Barracks. The Others abandoned them. It's the only place on the Island with any form of security right now, it'll have to do until I can think of something else. Until then, if you wanna live, you need to come with me."
"No one's going anywhere with you, John," Jack says. "Because they're not crazy."
"He's not crazy," Hurley says, speaking up. "What about Charlie? Charlie went down to that place so we could all be rescued. And whatever he did down there, it worked. But then something must have happened. He must have heard something before he... I don't know why, but he changed his mind. Because the last thing he did was to warn us that the people on that boat are not who they said they were. So I'm not listening to you. I'm listening to my friend. I'm listening to Charlie." Hurley goes and stands beside Locke.
"Anyone else?" Locke asks. "There isn't much time."
A handful of people including Claire, Karl, and a young girl with brown hair move over to Locke's side. One of them hold's Vincent's leash. Rousseau starts to walk over, still leading Ben. "Jack, with your permission, I'd like to go with John," Ben says.
"He's all yours," Jack says.
Two more people join, as does Sawyer and by this one, I'm surprised. Should I go with Locke? I want off of this Island so bad. I want to get back to my brothers and Gran. But I no longer believe that the people on the boat are good. Hurley's speech was very convincing but Charlie gave his life so that the people on the boast could find us. Going with Locke makes that seem like it's all in vain. I notice Desmond stays with Jack's group. That makes up my mind. This was supposed to be Desmond's rescue, not ours, and if he says with Jack, then that's good enough for me.
I'm staying with Jack.
"You know where to find us when you change your mind," Locke says, leading is group North.
The rest of us start heading back to the beach. Jack and Kate stay behind at the cockpit and I don't see them return.