The storm caught them unawares, at least it did Mike. Maybe the pilots had a warning. Mike would never know. One minute, the small turbo-prop was flying through bright tropical light, the next, the plane was bobbing about like a paper airplane in a tornado.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we are going to divert to avoid this little blow,” the pilot said as the plane banked steeply. Mike kept waiting for the bouncing to stop. A few minutes later, the plane again banked steeply, trying to find clear air. Mike was getting worried now. The storm had the plane now, tossing it around, forcing it to and fro. The six passengers could see the pilots wrestling with the controls fighting to keep the plane on course but not succeeding. Time seemed to stop for the passengers as they watched the pilot and co-pilot and beyond them through the front windscreen evil black clouds, pelting rain, and flashes of lightning; everything was happening too quickly.
A giant crack and flash lighted the whole world like a million flash bulbs going off at the same moment, followed immediately by a crashing boom as lightning hit the left wing. The plane shuddered as if it had been hit with a giant hammer. Mike saw a three foot outboard panel blown off. The plane yawed violently in that direction. The engine on that side quit.
That’s when he prayed. Mike prayed to Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, Christ, Odin, and Ishtar. Mike prayed to all of them. It was apparent now that the plane was losing altitude with only one engine running in this maelstrom. More lightning flashed around the plane but none hit. Another strike and they would be goners. The adults in front of Mike looked back at the three girls who sat next to and behind him. The father tried to smile to reassure the girls. They were all dressed in matching muumuus, obviously all on a wonderful vacation in paradise which suddenly had gone very wrong.
This hell dragged on as the plane kept losing altitude and the pilots hung on for dear life. They continued to be tossed about in the storm. The pilots tried to flee before the storm seeking clear air.
Mike looked up to the cockpit to see the co-pilot was frantically pointing at something and the pilot nodded. The two of them fought the plane into a bank. “Prepare for a crash landing…” the pilot screamed before he was cut off.
The couple in front were panicked beyond action. The three girls who sat beside and behind looked even more frightened. Mike could tell they were headed down and that worried him. He watched the pilots fighting the plane and could see they were trying to do something, land he prayed. Maybe they had seen an island with a runway.
The growling sea was coming up below; black and angry, waves boiling up as the wind lashed the tops, breaking them into spray. Then, giant waves breaking on rocks flashed below; suddenly the water was much calmer. The plane banked hard right and a strip of sand was running parallel to the plane. The engine powered down and the aircraft settled. The pilots were going to try and put down in this lagoon, inside the reef where the water was relatively calm.
The passengers felt the first bounce as the plane skimmed the water, then another bounce. They were slowing and the pilots were doing a masterful job slowing the craft like a rock skipping on water. They were going to make it… The plane settled onto the water, then all hell broke loose. A loud grinding crash ripped through the plane as the plane tumbled and shuddered. A horrible tearing and shrieking, the death knell of the plane, tore through the air as the plane was ripped apart, the whole world turning. Mike knew in a moment he was going to die.
Then quiet, the noise of the storm seemed tame compared to the horror of moments before. Mike opened his eyes and looked out into the storm. The front half of the aircraft was gone. Stunned, he looked around and realized that the plane had been torn in twain. The front half of the plane was gone. The tail was intact. He could see the three girls lifting their heads and staring ahead at a gaping black hole that used to be where the rest of the fuselage had been along with their parents.
A blast of rain hit him, waking him to action. He unbuckled his belt and looked out. The floor in front of the girl's feet was gone. He had barely enough room to stand. The tail was resting on the front half of the plane completely turned around. The crash had torn the fuselage in half and the tail had twisted free to rest on top of the front, which had flipped over and was pointing in the opposite direction. That was why they were out of the water. He looked and saw the beach maybe thirty yards away. The water inside the reef wasn’t calm but it wasn’t bad either.
He turned to the girls. “Can you swim?” screaming over the howling storm.
They nodded. “Come on! Hurry!” Mike grabbed the first girl and pulled her up. He saw that the girls couldn't swim in their matching muumuus. “Take off your dress.”
The girl looked at him like he was nuts.
“Do you want to drown? We have to swim for the shore.” He pointed. “See?”
She nodded but didn’t move, probably in shock. He did the only thing he could think of in the panic to get them out of the doomed craft. He grabbed her and turned her around, unzipping her dress. The shock in the sister’s faces was apparent as he pulled the dress off the first girl’s shoulders. She stood there in just panties and a bra. He pointed her to the beach. “Swim!”
She looked back, then turned and dove cleanly into the water. She was a swimmer.
Mike turned back and grabbed the next girl. “Hurry you two before we drown.” The example of their older sister was enough as they quickly shed their dresses and dove in. Mike followed them into the water, glad to be out of the potential death trap of the wreckage before something worse, like fire, hit. The first girl had struck out fast and was already at the beach. He watched for a moment to be sure the girls were going to make it to the beach, then turned back to the wreckage.
There were four people still there. Mike dove down below the tail. It was dark and he swam by feel but the gaping hole in the front half was easy to find. His hand found billowing hair and followed it to the woman, her seat was on the roof since the front half had flipped. He pulled her seat belt loose, she dropped down and he dragged her to the surface. He was able to stand waist deep in the churning water on top of the wing and dragged her up. She wasn’t breathing. He put her over his shoulder so her face was down and applied pressure to her abdomen. She vomited up water and coughed.
Her body must have shut down when her lungs filled. It is an instinctive reaction to being under water. There are cases of kids being under water for twenty minutes and being revived. Mike pushed again and she vomited up more water and groaned. She was incoherent but the groan meant she was breathing again, so he put her in a carry position and swam to the beach. The girls saw him coming and ran into the surf to drag their mother up on the beach.
He headed back to the wreck. This time he came in from the front looking to see if he could get the crew. He found out what had happened. The front of the plane had hit a rock just under the water and was stove in like it had been hit with a hammer. There was no chance for the pilots.
He swam frantically around to the back knowing that each second was the enemy as he headed down into the cabin. He found the man and pulled him loose, dragging him up on the wing and tried to get him to expel the water but nothing happened. Time was running out. Mike pulled him to the beach where the girls helped him drag the man up on the beach.
He tried all the techniques he knew to get water out. They worked a little but nothing brought him back. After a half hour Mike gave up, exhausted and despondent. The oldest girl had been watching every move intently. “You can’t stop!”
She started pushing on the man’s ribs as she had seen Mike do. He let her as it wouldn’t make any difference. Her sisters were crying. She kept trying until she was exhausted. “Daddy,” she cried out. “You can’t be dead.”
It was the saddest sound Mike had ever heard. Mike took her in his arms. “Let’s get your mom under some cover.”
That broke the spell as they switched attention to their unconscious mom. In a panic, they dragged and carried her up under the trees. He followed. The storm raged around, rain and lightning. The forlorn and shocked group fell asleep under the trees, drained by their own near death experience and the death of the girl's father.
Mike woke to bright light and a gentle breeze. The storm had blown by. He stood and looked at the girls. They were all breathing peacefully. Their mother was still unconscious, not a good sign.
He looked at the beach; it was empty. There was no evidence that a man had laid on the beach. The water had come just high enough that some larger waves had claimed his body for the sea. Mike looked over the lagoon, dreading seeing him floating in the clear aqua water, but there was nothing.
The tail of the plane was perched above the water but he had no idea how long it might be before the wind or a wave would send it into the water. He stripped down to his briefs and swam out to the plane, managing to climb in and looked around. The tail section had a storage area all the way to the rear. Inside were emergency supplies including a raft and tools and even some fresh water and food sealed in plastic. The plane carried whatever the regulations required for over water flights: one standard issue emergency kit. Mike thanked the gods for whoever had written that regulation because it would, in fact, be a lifesaver. He pulled the raft out and yanked the emergency cord filling it with air. He quickly loaded everything into it, not trusting the tail sections stability, and paddled back to shore.
This booty would keep them alive for a while; hopefully long enough for the rescue searchers to find them. He dragged the raft up on the beach. The noise woke the oldest sister. She rubbed her eyes then looked around. The panic was coming back.
“Good morning,” Mike said cheerily.
“What?”
“Good morning,” he repeated. He had met the family as they boarded and heard the girls names, not that he could remember them now. The oldest girl realized she was in just her panties and bra and sort of curled up with her arms over her chest. “How is your mom?” Mike asked.
She looked over at the unconscious woman. “I don’t know.”
There was a blanket in the kit. Mike spread it over her mother. There also was a medical kit: bandages, tape, scissors, aspirin; none of that was going to help. He broke out the provisions: water, flash dried provisions. Hmm, not all that tantalizing without a fire. Glancing around, he saw several coconut palms and a breadfruit tree. The coconut would be quickest way to get some food. Once again the magic box provided the answer: a machete.
He chopped off a bunch of coconuts from a palm which leaned precipitously, allowing him to climb it fairly easily, and carried the nuts back to the girls. They had all awakened. Obvious to Mike, the girls were all a little rattled. They had watched their father die, their mother was unconscious, they had been in a plane wreck, and they were sitting around in their underwear with a strange man.
One warm night in Rio as he walked along the beach looking at all the young girls, waiting on the beach for some man to pick them up, Mike had watched a vendor fix coconuts at a beachside stand. He tried to do what the man had done. Three chops to get off the husk and a final one to make a small hole. Unbelievably to him, it actually worked. He handed the first to the youngest looking girl. “Drink the milk. Then I’ll cut it open and you can eat the meat.”
She looked inside, then took a drink smiling at the sweet flavor. He chopped the next two coconuts and gave them to the girls. When they had finished the milk, he split the husks and showed them how to pry the meat out. He joined them with his own coconut. Fed, the girls looked in a lot better spirits.
Mike introduced himself, finding out the girls were Jenna, sixteen; Darcie, thirteen almost fourteen she informed him; and Emma, twelve. Their mother’s name was Roxanne. He didn’t ask about dad.
He looked around and told them it might be a little while, but the rescue planes should be out soon. He didn’t tell them that they would follow the projected flight plan first. Mike knew from having looked at a map before the plane left that there weren’t any islands close to their projected path. The storm had been blown them well off the path the searchers would use first.
Roxanne’s fever really got going that afternoon. She was sweating, shivering, and mumbling. All Mike could think to do was keep her warm and hope the fever would break. He wandered around a little and took the raft back out to the wreck to see if he could find anything else of value. When the tide had come in and taken their father’s body, it must have come up to the floor of the tail section. Their dresses were gone and the storage bin in the tail had water in it. There was nothing else to salvage.
Dinner was coconuts. Sunset was spectacular, but the girls weren’t in any mood to enjoy it. A warm wind had come up and was blowing in from the ocean. The waves picked up, soon crashing against the reef sending spray high in the air. That's when the grinding sound of metal caught their attention. The tail, sitting high in the air, wobbled, then collapsed into the lagoon and subsided beneath the water. Then quiet. Only Mike understood there went the emergency beacon that rescuers would need to track the plane, so far off course.
The girls kept looking at their mom, then at Mike, as if he could somehow pull a miracle from his hat. He didn’t have a hat. Mike kept waking up during the night to hear Roxanne mumbling and moaning. Her fever seemed to be getting worse. All he could do was hope it would break soon because she was going to be weak as a kitten as it was.
Breakfast was coconuts and, yes, they were getting tired of them. Roxanne looked worse for the wear and Mike was worried though he tried not to let the girls know. He wandered away from the beach and found a veritable paradise. There were breadfruit and jackfruit trees. That meant, at some time, this island had people since neither of those plants were native. They had been brought in by the Polynesian settlers. He also found a few banana trees, further evidence of previous habitation. He cut off one of the small jackfruit since the young fruit can be eaten raw, and a stalk with mature bananas.
The girls were grateful for the bananas but dubious of the jackfruit. Mike sliced it open and showed them the seeds, somewhat like dates. Jenna tried one and was surprised that it was edible. That was enough for Darcie and Emma to dig in. Two coconuts in 24 hours, the girls were hungry. If he could build a fire, Mike thought, he could cook one of the breadfruits.
The sun was high when Roxanne started mumbling and shouting incoherently. The girls were really spooked by that, looking like they were close to panic. “When people have a fever, this isn’t uncommon. We just need to keep her warm until the fever breaks,” Mike said. The girls looked a little relieved and hopeful he knew what he was talking about.
Roxanne subsided after a half hour. Her fever seemed higher, which worried him even more. He started looking for some wood to make a fire. He had been out about five minutes when he heard all three girls screaming, “Mike!” He ran back to find them panicked. They were pointing at Roxanne. He bent down and felt for a pulse and there wasn’t one. He thought about all of things you could do in a modern society and none of them applied. She was gone.
“I’m sorry girls. She’s dead.” They looked at him as though he really couldn’t have said what he had just said. It wasn’t real. They looked back at Roxanne and the reality crashed in on them. They started crying and huddled together.
Mike started assessing their situation. First, survival, for him and the girls. He had, through the snares of fate, been thrust into responsibility for the girls. His sense of self wouldn't allow him to abandon them any more than he could have killed them to get rid of the inconvenience.
Mike grabbed the shovel from the kit and started digging. Luckily, it is easy to dig in sand. He pulled the body into the grave and covered it. The girls barely watched, crying harder when he carried their mother’s body to the grave.
Once covered, he put everything into the raft. Mike wanted to get away from there. No way did he want to camp right by the grave, the girls would be hysterical. He dragged the raft down to the water and came back for the girls. They couldn’t move so he carried Jenna to the raft. When he grabbed Darcie, Emma followed crying even louder. He dumped the precious cargo of emergency items into the raft. Once away, he headed around the island hoping to find something, anything indicating people were here or visited at least.
He paddled, then told the girls to paddle. They ignored him, still crying. So he grabbed them one by one, put a paddle in their hands and made them paddle; anything to get their minds occupied. The sun was intense. “Jenna, look in the box and see if there is any suntan lotion.” She stared blankly at him. “NOW!” he shouted.
That broke the lethargy and she scrambled for the box. She pulled out an industrial size suntan lotion bottle. “Here,” she said.
“Slather some on and help your sisters. If you don’t you’ll all be lobsters in no time,” he told her. Jenna was first. She only put it on exposed skin. “Jenna, put some under your panties. Those things are so thin you’ll burn right through them.”
She turned red. “I will not.”
“You will too or I’ll spank your sunburned butt,” he said.
Her mouth hung open. No one had ever talked to her like that, but Mike knew he needed the girls to obey if there was any danger, and they wouldn’t know the difference. They needed to know he was in charge for their own safety.
“Up to you,” he said.
“Don’t look,” she said.
He laughed and turned away, like he hadn’t seen everything already through those little panties when they got wet. Oh well. He started paddling again keeping eyes forward.
After the three were coated, Mike applied a generous coating to himself. He could already feel the tropical sun on his white skin burning deep. That was after two weeks in the tropics trying to get a suntan. The lagoon, the area between the reef and island, varied from a few hundred yards to maybe thirty yards wide. They had gone around a few points of land when a strange formation jutted out into the sea.
When the raft drew near they saw a fresh water stream coming off the rocks and disappearing into the beach sand. The little promontory was caused by the constant running of the water. Mike looked up and saw a swale that ran all the way to the top of the mountain in the center of the island. The tip was just high enough that it tickled water from the passing clouds even when it wasn’t raining down below, creating a stream that probably ran consistantly.
Mike turned the raft in towards the beach and had the girls drag it up to the palms. He followed the stream and found a clearing just inside the edge of the trees. On the other side of the stream was a wall of rock and a soft grassy spot that had been incised by the stream. He knew he could build a lean-to against that rock wall pretty easily. “Ladies, I think we have a temporary home until they find us.” They looked around not very impressed. Emma, the youngest said, “Here?”
“It’s not the Ritz but it will have to do. Water there,” he said pointing, “the beach right by, and lots of trees so we should be able to find food.”
Jenna was pulling at her panties which had plastered themselves to her from the sunscreen. The others did the same.
“You can wash down in the ocean,” Mike said.
Jenna looked at the stream, “Why not there?”
“Because the salt water will clean better. Then rinse off in the stream to get rid of the salt,” he said.
The girls headed down to the water and were quickly having fun splashing each other as they tried to clean themselves off. Jenna looked up at Mike as he pretended not to be watching. She then stripped off her panties and bra and washed them and herself. The other girls followed her example. Mike couldn’t help but watch as the three little foxes splashed about naked. They dressed and came up to splash in the small pool formed by the last rocks right before the water headed down to the beach.
They were still dripping when they came back to the camp. “Okay ladies, first, see if you can find dead wood so we can have a fire.”
Their eyes lit up at that and they were soon scavenging for wood. He grabbed the machete and chopped some longer poles in order to make a shelter. He was already setting up the poles when the girls returned with wood. He helped them make a fire pit and put the small wood in. The emergency kit had a supply of matches and magnesium bars. He flaked a little of the magnesium in with the wood and lit it. The fire quickly was burning nicely. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to do this from scratch.
Jenna saw the poles. “What are those for?”
“A lean-to,” he said.
“What do we need that for?” she asked.
“To keep the rain off of us and the fire. I don’t want it put out every time we get a little shower,” he said.
“But I thought they’d find us,” she said. Emma and Darcie were looking at him with misgivings.
“Look, ladies. We were blown off course by that storm. They will start searching our course first. Only then will they realize we were blown off course. It may take a few days for them to find us,” he said confidently. “Okay?” he said smiling.
Emma and Darcie nodded. Jenna looked thoughtful. He sent them off to collect palm fronds for the lean-to. It needed to be big enough for the four of them as well as covering the fire. Mike had set up the fire right next to the rock wall so the smoke would follow it up. There was a small overhang and a bend so the smoke could follow it up like a natural chimney. When the girls returned he lashed the poles together and started lashing the palm fronds onto the roof. He made it a steep pitch roof so he had to climb the rocks to get the fronds up. The low end was only about as tall as him. It took a while but he had a covered lean-to by nightfall. The walls could wait.
The girls had been out foraging for soft grasses for the floor of the lean-to. Mike banked the fire so it would last until morning. That Boy Scout training was coming in handy and he had only gone to the scout meetings because his best friend was a scout.
Mike got out one of the pouches of prepared food, energy bars, and handed them out for dinner. The light fell fast at sundown and they were quickly huddled together under the lean-to. The girls were quickly asleep, tired by the long day. He lay awake and wondered, how long until they find us? Would they find us? The night held no answers.
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Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2008, 2010