It was only a little after noon, but the sun had disappeared and the sky was black. The air was so thick you could almost reach out and grab a handful. No tropical sea breeze could penetrate the dense smoke that covered the island like a scratchy wool blanket.
Mary Ann didn't know how she was standing. She didn't know how she was uninjured. And she didn't know where everyone else was. Every time she opened her mouth to yell for them she choked on the thick black smoke.
Her eyes stung. Her lungs burned. She couldn't breathe.
She pressed her palms over her ringing ears and winced. Beyond the ringing, everything was scarily quiet.
The sun was gone, but the temperature rose at an alarming rate. Dust and other particles in the air clung to her sweaty skin. The ground was hot and the air stunk of burning – plants, animals, things she didn't want to think about. Fires spotted the landscape, crackling and snapping and popping silently.
Trees stripped of their leaves stood soaring into the heavens, black and charred and naked. The island's thick gorgeous vegetation was blown from existence in a millisecond. Mary Ann turned in place, disoriented, searching for a landmark, her hair whipping her in the face and sticking there. She began running in no particular direction, stumbling to a halt after a few hundred yards to the horrible discovery that it looked exactly like where she had just come from.
Where is everyone?
Panic set in and Mary Ann's chest heaved. She involuntarily sucked more polluted air into her lungs and she gagged. She wanted to cry, but the intense heat left her with no tears.
"Skipper!" she was finally able to scream. "Professor!" She mustered all her energy, balled her fists, squeezed her eyes shut, for one powerful shout. "Gilligan!" she shrieked.
The sound was absorbed instantly into the thick cloud. Mary Ann waited, straining her ears to listen for anything beyond the ringing.
As if in direct reply to her shouts, a smoldering object dropped from the sky and landed beside her. It smelled of burning fur. She didn't want to look, but couldn't stop herself from creeping closer.
From behind wisps of smoke, Mr. Howell's beloved teddy bear stared back at her through dark plastic eyes. Mary Ann jumped back, more horrified than if it had been a real creature.
That doesn't mean anything.
Mary Ann looked up. The black cloud churned violently like the familiar Kansan sky as it prepared to unleash a tornado. More orange flickering objects cavorted in the cloud, growing larger as they descended to earth.
Another item crashed beside the bear, ripped and charred, but still recognizable as one of Mrs. Howell's parasols.
Mary Ann soon found herself screaming into the sky, waving away the still falling items, demanding them to stop with the sheer power of her will. She sobbed dry tears, yelling incoherently into the smoke as the life preserver from the S.S. Minnow shot from the sky, bounced once on its side as it hit the ground, rolled in a circle, and landed, smoking, directly in front of her. A second later, the radio crashed beside it and she jumped back.
Mary Ann dropped to her knees and her eyes raked over the smoldering objects. She was caked with dust and her skin prickled. Her hair stuck to her face and neck. She reached out tentatively for Mrs. Howell's parasol, but burning embers sprinkled from the sky onto her arm and she pulled back.
Mary Ann watched, mesmerized, as a light gauzy object slowly floated above her, raining fire. It danced on the nonexistent breeze, taking its time in descending to earth, curls of smoke reaching back from its corners into the heavens. Mary Ann watched it intently, its slow undulating movements stretching out time in an eerily peaceful interlude.
Mary Ann suddenly gasped. "Ginger!"
Upon this realization, Ginger's scarf dropped to the ground in front of her like a ton of bricks.
"Ginger, no!"
Mary Ann's gaze returned to the sky, desperately searching for anything else. "Gilligan?" Mary Ann stood and turned in place, craning her neck to peer upward. "Gilligan!"
Something flopped to the ground a few feet away and Mary Ann threw herself at it, landing above it on all fours. She stared down at the blackened and smoking object, her brain taking way too long to register that it was the remains of Gilligan's hat.
Mary Ann's heart stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. She didn't breathe for what felt like an eternity, until all of her senses rushed back at once and she gasped for air, heart pounding so hard against her ribs that she thought it would leap from her body and bounce away.
Strength gone, she dropped to the ground, skin burning where it touched the boiling earth. She rolled onto her back and pressed her grimy forearms over her eyes. She lay alone amidst the smoldering artifacts, body convulsing with dry sobs. The more grief-stricken she became, the more smoke she unintentionally sucked into her lungs.
"Mary Ann. Mary Ann?"
She thought she was imagining it at first. Her ears were still ringing, but she heard her name very faintly through the din, far away and muted. A cruel joke from the fates.
"Mary Ann?"
Louder this time. She was beginning to feel dizzy. Everything was becoming blurry. Blackness slowly crept in from her peripheral vision, so she closed her eyes.
"Mary Ann!"
She felt a pressure on her upper arms. Her breathing slowed. The air tasted awful. Each breath was shallower than the last as her lungs filled with the thick noxious smoke.
"Mary Ann, wake up!"
Her eyes flew open and she inhaled a huge gulp of fresh crisp tropical night air, back arching clear off the ground.
Gilligan hovered over her, gripping her arms, his eyes wide.
Mary Ann stared up at him and her eyes flickered to his hat – clean, white, and perched on his head where it should be.
In an instant, she scrambled into his lap and pressed her face into the crook of his neck, clutching handfuls of his shirt. She breathed deeply to refill her lungs, trying to make the sweet scent of Gilligan's homemade soap and coconut hair tonic overpower the acrid stench of smoke and destruction that she could still smell.
Gilligan sat still, unsure of exactly what to do, until she began to calm down. Her hair brushed his cheek and he felt her tears drying on his neck. She was still trembling, so he raised his arms around her and laid his hands on her back.
Her grip on his shirt relaxed and her head rolled onto his shoulder, his collarbone digging into her cheek. She stared at his buttons, still fighting to regain control of her breathing.
"What was it about?" Gilligan finally asked.
Mary Ann shook her head.
"Do you want to hear about mine?"
She shook her head again, harder this time.
"It has a happy ending."
Mary Ann tilted her head so she could look up at him. He was smiling. "How could it?"
"The missile lands, but it doesn't explode right away. So the Professor says that we can climb in and undo the wires so it won't explode. I'm the only one little enough to fit inside. Except you, but I won't let you go."
Mary Ann sighed and patted his chest. "My hero."
"Yeah, so he gives me some tools and tells me which wires to disconnect. So I climb in and it's real dark and scary. But I find the right wire and it works and we're saved!"
"I wish it would happen that way, Gilligan."
"Me, too."
She went quiet and Gilligan glanced around at the tent he had constructed and then down at the girl in his lap. She was almost asleep again. His face suddenly fell. "Mary Ann?" he whispered urgently, voice cracking. "Mary Ann! I didn't stay in my own tent."