“Whose is it?” Elsa demanded, her arms crossed as she edged closer to Rosie. The managerial iciness that had earned the nickname, the Ice Queen, was back in full force in Elsa’s voice. I had to smile a little as I watched Rosie turn to her. For a brief moment, things felt familiar, even though we were as far removed from our previous environment as we could possibly be. Everyone turned to Rosie within the next few moments, and she quailed a little under the weight of the gazes on her.“I think it’s Felicia’s,” Rosie replied, her voice rising at the end of her sentence. She’s unsure of it, then? What if she’s wrong? I thought. “I think I remember seeing it on Felicia.”“Felicia? Do you mean Felicia Fletcher?” Claire cut in, her brows furrowed. “She was with us at first. Felicia was already with Hans when he persuaded you and me to join him, right?”“That’s right,&rdquo

“We have to take care of this, Yvonne,” I told her, sighing only a little. Who could fault her indefatigable attitude? “I need you to stay here in the shade. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”“Okay,” she agreed, trying her best to smile back at me even though I knew she had to be in pain. The sunburn looked worse than usual to me - her skin looked to be quite red, almost like that of a lobster’s. If she got an infection, since skin that had been rubbed raw was essentially an open wound, we had no way to treat her. I had to find something that we could use.I headed for the hill I had been lying atop the day I had followed Hans and his men back from the ocean. While scrambling up the hill, I had seen something that I thought would be of use, but I wasn’t entirely sure. I climbed up the hill, huffing and puffing my way along. Seems a little harder than the day you first climbed it, I thought. Maybe adrenaline was pushing you alon

“Come on. I need you to fill up the bottles with water. Can you do that?” I asked gently after Claire’s sobs had died down. Shakily, she nodded, but made no move to begin doing so. I put the bottles next to her, along with the large tin, and left her to it.“I’m going to explore the wreckage of the plane again,” I told her, and she nodded. To tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting to find anything useful on the plane. I knew that Hans had looted it several times, and by now, after a week, anything that was perishable had to have expired already. Still, I wanted something to do aside from sitting by Claire while she was distraught, and exploring the plane wreck would have to do.Covering my nose and mouth with my shirt, I climbed into the wreck and stepped gingerly around the debris on the floor. The front half of the plane was quite charred, and I spared it only a quick peek before moving on. The bodies there were now slowly decaying,

Euphie and I slept on the ground by the second fire. When I awoke, I had a godawful crick in my neck from sleeping sitting up, especially since I had nothing to lean against at all. Groaning quietly, I tried to stretch out the kinks in my neck and my back (thank god there’s nothing in my crack, my brain supplied) without waking Euphie up. She had lain down at some point, and her head was pillowed on my lap. The back of her head was pressed against the junction of my thigh and my torso, and she was breathing deeply, clearly not awake yet.Moving as slowly as I could, I laced my hands beneath her head so that I could lift it off my lap. I scooted my ass away from Euphie, trying to gain enough distance before lowering her head back down to the ground so that I could stand up and move around, but she jolted awake with a start.“Argh!” she groaned, sitting up quickly and smoothing a hand over her hair. “What the fuck… Oh. Um. Guess I fell asleep,&

The trek was far more exhausting than any of us had anticipated, least of all me. I had been relatively unfit before the plane crash, as I had never cultivated the habit of going to the gym to work out. I did no other exercise aside from running for the bus, or carrying heavy bags of groceries home. Still, being a man made me physically stronger than the rest of the girls. I had known this deep down, but I had not fathomed just how different we were. After packing, we had set off immediately, determined to take advantage of the rest of the daylight - or what little there was left of it, anyway. Time had passed too quickly while we were staring at the mutilated body we had found and packing our things after that, and it was close to twilight already.We had only been walking for about an hour when I noticed that the girls were falling behind. Euphie was still right next to me, but everyone else was not. I stopped for a moment, turning around. Elsa and Yvonne were a few meters aw