Chapter 3: A surreal farewell… not with a whimper
They made it from the bamboo grove to the beach camp with a couple of hours of daylight to spare. Hurley and Bernard carried Jack's body with the wire mesh net from the latest Dharma food drop, bamboo polls threaded through it and across their shoulders. When they got there, the guys began digging while Rose searched the remains of the camp for blankets. Then she pulled a log from the brush behind the tents and sat near Jack, watching them work.
"Nine times," she said, more to herself than them. "Nine times we've dug a grave on the beach in three years. Scott, Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby, those two kids with the diamonds. What were their names?"
"Nikki and Paulo," Hurley said, not breaking stride with the shovel.
"Right. Now Locke, and Jack." Hurley and Bernard were digging Jack's resting place a few yards from Locke's, a fact not lost on any of them.
Rose thought about the day three years ago when Jack had walked up to her on the beach and told her she needed to drink some water, eat something, join the rest of them and stop staring out at the beach for the missing and presumed-dead Bernard. She said a prayer that after today, the burials would be over for awhile.
For some time after that, the only sounds were the big winter waves crashing on the beach and the quick, sharp noises the shovels made in the dirt.
Hurley wondered if he might see Jack soon, if he would show up with some advice from time to time like Ana Lucia, Charlie and Michael had. But he had to admit, right now it felt like the answer was no. Maybe, he thought, that was because Jack had been wrong about the island for so long and only realized it at the last minute. "You asked me to trust you," he'd said to Hurley. "This is me trusting you." That was barely a day ago, but felt like a year.
The sun was down and it was almost completely dark when they finished burying him. The sky that had been clear earlier was full of heavy clouds and it smelled like it might start raining soon. The three of them stood there, and Hurley thought that it just made no sense to be looking at Jack's grave. He'd been in so much grief when Libby died, he couldn't really feel anything else. And with the others nearby who had passed, it'd been hard burying them but not this completely confusing. For someone who wanted off of the island so badly, Hurley thought, the island felt pretty weird without Jack on it. He wondered how long it'd take for that feeling to wear off, how long he would live here and who would bury him.
"Do you want to say a few words, Hurley?" Bernard asked.
"Sure. It's just... well, Jack's the one who usually kind of got these things going."
Bernard nodded. Hurley looked out at the ocean and back to the beach.
"Goodbye, Jack. Thanks for helping us figure out how to live together when we had no idea what was happening or how we'd survive. You didn't always make the right decisions, but you kept trying. Now we have to make the decisions, and hope we'll have it in us to keep trying too."
"Well said, Hurley," Rose gathered up the shovels and started walking toward the trees. "Let's get organized, maybe we can make it back to the cabin before the rain starts."
They had only taken a few more steps when something else entirely started. The sky that had been a blue black shade with grey clouds took on a swirling green color, and a low rumble under their feet make the ground feel like an unreliable thing to stand on.
It kept shaking as the rumble turned into an enormous, echoing bang that shook fruit off the trees and sent rocks and pebbles skittering down a nearby hill. They stumbled back toward the beach to get away from the trees and what was falling out of them, just in time to see a brilliant, white light start sweeping in a circle like a strobe, seemingly around the entire island. They tried to tell if it was coming from the water or the sky, but it was so bright they could only shield their faces and get glimpses of it.
Hurley counted- one, two, three, four… five times the white light circled, then stopped in place and went out as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving them almost blinded until their eyes adjusted. And then there they were, looking out at their beach, the graveyard, the remains of the camp, just as if it had never happened.
"That wasn't…the smoke monster, was it?" Rose asked herself as much as the other two.
"No, no way," Hurley said, "It's dead, I know it is. And that was no tika-tika-tika, that sounded like the whole island got picked up and slammed back down. I would think maybe it really had except the waves are coming in perfectly normally."
"I don't think we moved again either- no headache, no white flash. Just that light. Any other ideas?" Bernard asked, and then they stood there in silence.
"Absolutely no freaking clue." Hurley said. They all looked at each other and started to laugh, and they laughed so hard they couldn't breathe. Rose had to walk back to a tree and hold on to collect herself.
"Well, Hurley, your kitchen cabinet may not be much help figuring this place out, but at least we're battle-hardened," she said. "Hopefully Ben will have some ideas for you tomorrow, if whatever that was doesn't kill us all by then."
Then they walked back to the cabin under a sky that was suddenly so perfectly clear you could see the points on every star. Bernard and Rose talked quietly with each other, Hurley just ahead of them. He realized that for the first time he could remember, and despite the latest shock to their systems he felt perfectly and very oddly at home.
He stayed at their camp that night and slept for 12 hours. When he woke up, they were both off somewhere and Vincent was sitting by his side, wide-awake and watching him expectantly.
Hurley left a note, "See you soon. Vincent's with me," and the two of them started out for Dharmaville.