After the Crash, They All Needed Me

Chapter 009

“Do you think there really are others on the island?” I asked Euphie, taken aback. I thought she was unconscious all this while. Just how much does she know?

“There should be other survivors,” Euphie muttered, her eyebrows meeting in the middle of her forehead. “I have the strangest feeling that I heard voices right after I landed, and I know it wasn’t you, Yvonne, or Elsa.”

“Alright,” I replied, already trying to think through the possibilities. The first thing I did was to check and see if anyone else was alive. If someone else is around, then they must have left us for dead, I thought. It was not a promising notion, and I set off cautiously to search the beach once more, Yvonne’s backpack slung over my shoulder. It did smell a little fishy, but it was the only thing we had to carry stuff around in.

My trek along the nearest section of the beach yielded quite a few useful things. There was a flotation device, which I slit into two parts carefully with a knife. It would come in handy if we had extra food we needed to store. Further foraging led me to discover the empty plastic bottle we had left on the beach yesterday, a large rusty tin, and two unopened cans of sardines, which looked brand new. They had probably been washed ashore after the crash, and I inspected the sardines carefully after brushing off the sand. The cans were still intact, and they weren’t expired either! We were in luck. Once I returned, I wrapped the leftover meat on the wolf’s carcass in the flotation device after a quick sniff test to ensure that it had not gone bad.

“That’s just trash,” Euphie said coolly as I returned and unpacked the contents of my backpack.

“Do you know how to distill water, then?” I asked, trying to keep from being angry. Euphie looked a little distressed, actually. I had only been gone for twenty minutes or so, but I had glimpsed the most forlorn look on Euphie’s face when I had returned, as though I had been gone for an hour instead. Her face darkened, and she shook her head reluctantly.

“That’s OK. Here,” I instructed, handing her the cans. “I need you to take these cans and open them up. Put the sardines in the other piece of the flotation device - we’ll eat it later for breakfast.” While she did that, I poked at the fire, building it up until it was a little more decent. I took the cans from Euphie once they were empty and trekked back down to the beach to wash them out, filling up the plastic bottle with seawater along the way.

“How do you distill water?” she asked once I returned, clearly in a better mood at the prospect of having something to eat and drink. I glanced at the pile of sardines. They were still untouched, and my estimation of Euphie improved. She was clearly hungry, but she hadn’t eaten before everyone else had awoken.

“First, you need something to hold the tin up in the flames,” I explained, picking up the larger rusty tin. “But air doesn’t conduct heat very well, so we’ve got to fill this with sand.” Euphie contributed enthusiastically, darting out of the cave with the tin eagerly and scooping up sand in her cupped palms. In no time at all, we had the tin filled, and I set it in the middle of the flames.

“Next, you set the little tin in the sand and wedge it in tightly.” Using my fingers, I pushed the sardine tin halfway into the sand before filling it almost to the brim with seawater from the plastic bottle. Reaching for the other sardine tin, I snapped the lid off, bending it back and forth a few times so that the top straightened itself out.

“Now we wait. Once the water starts boiling, we’ll hold the lid over the steam that gathers. The water vapor will condense, and we can use the other sardine can to catch what rolls off. After the water cools, we can pour it into the other water bottles.”

“Forrest, that’s amazing!” Euphie exclaimed. She seemed to have gotten over her earlier disgruntlement, and she leaned forward to take the lid of the tin from me. “Let me do it, then. I remember learning the science of this all the way back in elementary school, but I didn’t ever think I’d get to put it into action.” After saying that, Euphie drooped a little, as though reality was hitting her.

“I didn’t think I’d need to either,” I said quickly, trying to commiserate. “Oh! Euphie, is there a cargo hold on the plane?” She turned to look at me, her expression quizzical.

“Yes, there is. But why? Oh - you must be trying to look for some luggage to see if anyone brought anything useful!” I nodded. She was indeed right. When she’s not busy being angry at you, she’s actually pretty cute, I observed. The way that she had answered her own question made me smile.

“You’re right. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Share these sardines with Elsa and Yvonne when they wake up, alright? I’ll leave you a knife just in case anyone wanders by.” Euphie nodded, flashing me a little smile after I followed through and set a knife down right next to her.

The corpses that were left inside were in pieces. Nothing seemed whole at all. The interior was charred and blackened, as were the bodies scattered about the interior. The dark smears I had seen on the glass windows were probably blood. Swallowing hard, I turned away from the front half of the plane and headed toward the second half. There was no way I was going to investigate that scene of carnage.

The back half of the plane looked to be in much better condition. There were no bodies, for one, and it did not seem to have caught on fire either. The rear was where the cargo hold was, anyway, and I climbed inside apprehensively after poking my head in and scanning the surroundings.

Success! There were four suitcases left inside the cargo hold. One of them looked to be a woman’s suitcase, since it was dark purple. Selecting that one and another at random, I hauled them out of the ruins and huffed and puffed my way further inland, leaving the two suitcases behind a small cluster of rocks. Hope no one comes across them, I grumbled, straightening up after having stowed them away.

“Mr Jameson, we’ve already looted the plane. Why are we coming back?”

Damn it! I cursed internally, ducking right back down behind the rocks. The voice sounded like it belonged to a middle-aged man, and I thought I knew who it was.

“You know nothing. We only got a little food out of the kitchen area, which isn’t going to last us long at all. Go and check the cargo hold, you cretin,” another voice barked. My heart sank. I knew that voice all too well, but I raised myself up a little, risking discovery in order to confirm what I thought.

It was Hans Jameson! He was the business manager at our company. I scowled, feeling pissed off already. He didn’t even get the job on his own merits. He’s the business manager because he’s the brother-in-law of the chairman of the board of directors, I thought. And he stole my goddamn girlfriend!

I had been with my high school sweetheart, Vicky, for about five years at that point. We had gotten together as seniors in high school, weathered four years of college together, and even applied for the same companies in the hopes of getting to work together. Initially, things seemed to be going well - we both landed jobs here, and we had been living together for about a year at that point. I had even been thinking about proposing.

Hans had ruined everything, though. He had started inviting Vicky out for business lunches and dinners, which I hadn’t realized were dates until it was too late. Business lunches and dinners turned into cocktail parties and toadying up to clients, until one day Vicky moved out of our apartment, leaving me with the explanation that I was boring. Boring!

In comparison to Hans Jameson, I probably was boring. Forrest Chaplain had very few things that drew people to him, actually. I’m not fantastic at small talk, I’m alright looking but not devastatingly handsome, and I don’t make that much money. And what’s worse - I told Vicky it was OK not to have penetrative sex, since I didn’t want to dishonor her strict Christian upbringing. I was so stupid back then!

The very next day after Vicky had moved out, Hans Jameson had come to look for me at my cubicle. “Your girlfriend’s a vixen in bed,” he had sneered, relishing how I had blanched. “Oo-wee, she must have been holding out on you.”

I should just kill him right now, I told myself. I’ve got a knife, and I’ve definitely got enough rage to propel me across the sand until I stick this into that goddamn face of his. What’s stopping me?

Logic and reason won, unfortunately. There were three people I could see - Hans, the middle-aged man who had spoken earlier, and someone else who was standing further away. If the other two people were indeed his stooges, as I had guessed, then I would be no match against three people, even armed with a knife.

“You’re a genius, Mr Jameson! There are two suitcases still here!” the middle-aged man shouted, his voice carrying over the beach.

“Get them, you dummy,” Hans barked before turning to the other person.”Have you seen that useless layabout Forrest Chaplain on the beach today? We need to deal with him!”

Me? Why the hell was Hans Jameson looking for me?