The Island Ch. 01

"And if they didn't get the pilot's transmissions?" Amy asked, kneeling down next to him.

Tom shook his head. "Then it is the same process from the point they received the last satellite positioning data. But that could be anywhere. Maybe even from before the pilot made the turn. That search area just gets bigger and bigger. Using that cone pattern, and the estimated distance a plane could cover, plus allowances made for deviations in flightpath, that search area would be..." He frowned for a second and started scratching some numbers into the sand. I am pretty good at math, but he was quickly losing me.

Ray gasped as Tom apparently finished his calculations, tapping on the final number. "Jesus. That is a search area a fifth of the size of the continental US."

"Mmm, yes." Tom nodded, appearing grateful that Ray was paying attention. "But it gets worse."

"Wait." Hannah interrupted. "The plane has a transponder, it has an ACARS system. Hell, even the black box gives off a signal."

"Yes... Yes... The transponder and ACARS send information to Air-traffic control through the radar..."

Ray groaned loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"What?" Hannah asked, looking up at him in confusion.

"There is no radar over the open ocean..." he sighed, dragging his hand down over the rest of his face. "The transponder and ACARS would be useless."

"Exactly." Tom went on, "and the black box's range is.... Limited... and it's under a mile of water."

"Jesus, any other bad news?" Someone asked as Hayley's hand slipped into mine nervously.

"Yes," Tom answered simply. "It will take hours for planes to start the search and a few days for the Navy to reach this far. But they are looking for the wreckage. Even if they find it..."

"We... aren't at the wreckage." Ray finished for him.

Tom nodded. "The storm last night was a big one, very big, very strong. Winds gusting over a hundred miles an hour, they pushed the raft. We could have been moving as fast as twenty or thirty miles an hour... every hour... for most of the night. Plus, the ocean currents, if we caught one of them, could have pulled us even further away. We could be as much as 300 miles from the wreckage, and not even we know which direction we were traveling for most of the night, and even then, it wouldn't have been in a straight line. We could be... anywhere."

"And by the time the Navy reaches the wreckage, assuming they find it at all, they won't be looking for survivors anymore." Ray finished before he slumped onto the ground. "He's right. The chances of them finding us here are..."

"Depending on the size of the Island... about 270million to one," Tom finished for him.

Another deathly silence washed over the group, but Tom, having got out the information he needed, seemed to relax. Zoe started quietly crying... although it could have been Caroline.

"So..." I finally said after a long few minutes of quiet. "... We need to start thinking about long-term survival here. That means we need to find food, water, and shelter."

"I work for the US Geological Survey." One of the women said, stepping forward. "I can start surveying the island tomorrow, maybe get an idea of the layout, maybe see if I can find some water? But I will need help."

"I'll go with you," Hannah said, standing up. "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

"Elizabeth, or Lizzy for short." The woman said with a smile. Lizzy was middle-aged, probably a little older than me, but she wore those years well. Her body was curvy but fit, and her caramel-colored hair ended at her shoulders. She had a look that just screamed 'mom'.

"Okay, Lizzy, I will help." Hannah smiled

"So, let me get this straight," Hayley said from beside me, having watched the back and forth with an arched eyebrow. "We crash in the middle of the Ocean, and it just so happens that the guy we survive with works for the Coast Guard. And he has the skill and experience to navigate us back to the wreckage to find the rest of you," she nodded at Ray. "When we get to the raft, there just happens to be a doctor who survived as well." The next nod was to Amy. "We get here, and we find out that Tom is an expert at this sort of thing and is able to explain to all of us what is going on, so we don't waste time on trying to get rescued and concentrate on surviving. Next, we have a woman able to map and survey the island and able to find out if there is fresh drinking water here, and if so, where it is. I swear, if we have an Engineer or a builder here too, I am going to lose my damn mind!"

I coughed a little and raised my hand.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me!" Hayley exclaimed before a round of soft laughs rippled through the group. Even I had to admit, this was all very convenient.

*********

A few hours later, I was alone. Hayley was still back with the group but kept throwing glances my way. I wasn't sure what type of connection had formed between us, but for the time being, she seemed unwilling to be too far away from me. For now, she was happy as long as I stayed within eyesight.

Despite the extraordinary amount of exercise I'd had over the past day, my legs had started to cramp up sitting on the sand, so I decided to go for a little bit of a walk to stretch them. Only as far as the waterline, but the simple act of walking, my feet in the surf, was enough to make me feel a little better.

Out of everyone in the group, I seemed to be the one least bothered by our predicament. The last twenty-four hours had been life-altering on the most fundamental level. And the simple fact of the matter was that I was in no real rush to go home. Almost dying had put things into perspective. But far from providing the calm understanding that life was too short to stay angry at Sarah and Lewis, it had done the opposite. Life was too short, but to me, it was too short to keep parasites like them in it.

It was strange to think that even when we had been falling out of the plane, even when I had been convinced that we were all going to die, I hadn't once thought of either Sarah or Lewis. Neither of them had crossed my mind. I was subtly aware that I was the odd one out in that regard. Everyone else in the group had spent the hours since Tom's explanation talking about their loved ones. One of the women whose name I had forgotten had been traveling with her sister; she couldn't bring herself to come to terms with her loss. Another had been traveling with her husband and had hardly spoken at all for the entire time since the crash. She had just sat there, staring off into space, in a state of complete shock. Ray had actually been on his way to Sydney to attend the funeral of his mother, she had been the last of his family. He had recently started a relationship with a girl and was sad that he may never see her again. Most of the others had been traveling alone, although more than a few of them had family who would be getting some bad news fairly soon.

But for me, I had no loved ones at home waiting for me. Yes, I had my parents and my brother, but we were the sort of family who got together a few times a year around the holidays and exchanged the odd phone call between. Although I had no doubt they would be devastated on learning I had gone down with the plane, I personally was not close enough to them to miss them on a day-to-day basis.

I know it sounded petty, I know it was beneath me, but the only regret I felt at not being home; was the fact that I would miss the reaction of my betrayers, when they were told I had been lost in the crash. I know it doesn't make me sound like a particularly good person when I say that I wanted that guilt to eat them alive. But it was the truth and I wanted everyone around them to know what they had done, who they had done it to, and for them to spend the rest of their lives knowing they would never be able to make it right.

I doubted Lewis had the moral backbone to feel that kind of guilt, but a man can hope.

Still, it was a lot to deal with. 109 people were dead, and 109 families had been utterly destroyed. Given what Tom had said and the sense it had slowly made, it was very possible that all of us may be declared lost. The husbands and children of the people on the beach would all spend the rest of their lives thinking that ours had ended. That may not have bothered me as much, it may be true that I was the least affected, but that didn't mean that their loss didn't affect me at all. It didn't mean that we were all suffering from some sense of survivor's guilt, given the catastrophic amounts of death we had faced. A profound sense of grief was washing through our group, and I felt more than a little awkward at being the only one not feeling it.

But, for the foreseeable future, three men, nine women, and a heroically intact life raft were now on this beach, and we would have to find a way to survive. I turned and looked back at the island. It really was an island, as opposed to a scrap of land barely above the water. A small mountain started to climb out of the forest a few hundred yards from the beach, and it looked, from here, like there may be more mountains further inland. As long as King Kong or a hungry Dinosaur didn't come stomping out of the treeline in some lost-island shit, I was optimistic we would find what we needed to survive. The raft could act as shelter for now.

Ah shit, that reminded me. The body of the man who had died in the raft was still in there. He deserved a proper burial.

I turned to make my way back towards the group, hopefully, to enlist Ray to help me, when something hard tapped against my foot. I looked down to see the last thing on earth I expected to see. A small, gray plastic elephant stared up at me, tapping against my toes as it rocked in the surf. The entire right-hand side of her face had been scorched and charred black. My eyes widened immediately at the sudden recognition.

"Ellie... Jonny... No."

My gaze flicked to the open ocean, the sun just starting its descent off to the west as the emotional weight of the day landed on my shoulders. That little boy's face, the warm smile of his mother... It was all too much, I suddenly acutely felt the grief that I thought I was immune to.

I crumbled to the ground, picked up the toy, and sobbed uncontrollably.

********

Thank you, fabulous readers, for working your way through the first chapter in this brand new series. The Island will be another grand epic that will focus on storyline and character development rather than having sex scenes for the sake of having sex scenes. None of the series I ever write will be purely about getting my characters off. The little shits need to earn it. ;)

I will admit that I had a little trouble deciding if this story should be in the mind control or sci-fi genres of lit. Eventually, I chose mind control just because that is where the NewU series is, and that is where it was most likely to be found. But the story, as I envision it, could easily fit into either.

I have a fair idea of where this narrative is going, but I have been reading on lit for well over a decade and have realized that the stories I enjoy most are the ones that involve a little bit of conflict. Conflict with a character's inner-self, conflict with the wider world, or struggling to resolve a difficult situation that he finds himself in. So that is how I write. As much as I love that you all enjoy my work, it would be impossible to pen something that didn't give me enjoyment to write as well. Having something happen to a character and then everything just falls perfectly into place for them is, frankly, boring.

So no, life is not all going to be sweetness, roses, and unicorn farts for the newest of our heroes. There will be trials and struggles that he and his new group of friends will have to overcome if they have any chance of surviving. But it is going to be a hell of a ride.

As mentioned at the beginning, the NewU series is still very much alive and well, I have every intention of it staying that way, but writing this has allowed me to clear out some ideas that will allow me to refocus on future chapters for that series. For clarity, I should point out that I have no plans to make these two series related. There is no crossover in theme or "universe" between this story and NewU. I also always update my profile when new chapters are finished.

Thank you all for indulging my little literary hobby. The reception my work has received has always blown me away. The lit readers community are the best out there and you are all awesome.

Stay tuned for more from the Island.

Nova