Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both!

by Jeremy Costello

  ‘What're you looking for, friend?’ James called out.

  When he realised he wasn't alone, the man’s head snapped up in a spray of rain. ‘I know it’s here somewhere!’

  James approached wearily and placed a gentle hand on the man’s arm. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked. ‘Do you have any injuries?’

  ‘I need to find my suitcase,’ the man insisted, pallid and wild-eyed.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  No response, just a passive glance.

  ‘Hey, can you hear me? What’re you doing out here?’

  ‘Get away from me, mate!’ the surfer yelled back, his accent heavy east coast Australian.

  James took a step back. ‘I think you’re in shock, friend. I just want to help you –’

  ‘I’m not your friend, dude, and I’ll let you know when I need your help! Shock…Jesus Christ!’

  Over his shoulder, James caught a glimpse of Abbey walking back to the shoreline. He was close to abandoning the Australian and joining her. ‘Listen,’ he yelled. ‘I don’t know what your problem is and I don’t know what you’re looking for, but when you’re ready to talk we’ll be around, alright.’

  ‘The only problem I have is I can’t find my bag!’

  ‘Like I said…’

  ‘You’ll be around,' muttered the Australian dismissingly. 'Good to know.’

  ‘Will you at least tell me your name?’

  ‘Sol,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘Sol Delaney.’

  ‘Have you seen any other survivors, Sol, or is it just you?’

  Sol shook his head. ‘I was flying alone. You’re the first people I’ve seen since we went down, but you know, I haven’t really been looking.’

  ‘Why the hell not, Sol?’

  ‘Forget the bodies, dude,’ he muttered. ‘They’re smoke.’

  ‘What do you mean smoke?’

  ‘Look around, mate, the passengers are history. If you want to look, look. Me, I have to find my suitcase.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. And if you were out there dying?’

  Sol glanced away impatiently. ‘Well I'm not, dude!’

  ‘What kind of attitu –’

  ‘We done?’

  Sol went back to the bags, unhinged.

  James backed away. The conversation with Sol had strangely filled him with sadness. Never in his life had he encountered such an apathetic approach to death, such a blankness. As he watched Sol ruthlessly rooting through the luggage, blonde locks lashing in the wind, he felt sorry for the man, a deep sense of pity sitting on a shelf high above Sol’s selfishness.

  Turning morosely away, he jogged after Abbey.

  12

  The next bay lay peppered with debris like the aftermath of a battlefield. From the top of the rocky bay partition, James and Abbey looked across the devastation, the handful of bodies, the slabs of steel and seat rows jutting from the sand amidst leaping campfires.

  ‘My God,’ James heard his companion whisper. He made his way down the rocks and stepped in amongst the ruin. He sensed Abbey at his heel, her footsteps pressing into his own. They moved between the wreckage like wandering scavengers, one by one flipping the twelve or fifteen bodies onto their backs, probing them for signs of life.

  ‘Over here!’ Abbey bellowed. ‘I’ve got a live one.’

  At her side, James examined the young girl Abbey had discovered; eleven or twelve and at a glance unhurt. Aside from the ill-fitting dress, she wore a small locket around her neck dangling from a thin silver chain.

  He leant down and lowered his ear to the girl’s breast, finding the steady thump of a heartbeat. With a little coaxing and relentless rain, the girl came gingerly around. She pushed herself into a sitting position and coughed some water from her throat. Her eyes wandered confusedly.

  Brushing the hair away from her face, Abbey asked her if she was in any pain.

  A shake of the head.

  ‘She’s okay,’ Abbey said to James, ‘I’ll stay with her.’

  James began moving once again through the few remaining bodies, finding each one stone cold, beaten, life having abused them, death having claimed them.

  He made his way back towards Abbey and the girl. In the firelight he could see Abbey’s lips moving, attempting to cajole words from their new companion.

  Pausing next to a burning seat, he sat in the sand and let the rain wash over him. Was this shit actually happening, he wondered? It was the twenty-first century for Christ’s sake, wasn’t being stranded on a desert island a couple of hundred years out of date?

  The rain finally managed to extinguish the flaming seat in a plume of blue smoke. He faced the heavens, his eyes heavy. So far they were a band of four, if he included Sol Delaney, and four was not enough to begin picking up the pieces here. As he trained his eyes back on the two females, one question leapt to the forefront of his mind: did anybody, on the island or off, have any idea where they were?

  Before he had time to contemplate, his head jolted out to sea and to the disappearing mass of aircraft, the scream of a woman ringing out across the bay.

  Somebody was alive out there.

  *

  He scrambled to his feet and ran to the shore, damp shirt trying to free itself from his back.

  ‘James!’ Abbey bellowed. ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot!’

  Abandoning the confused girl, she sprinted to James’s side and snatched his arm, tugging him away from the water.

  ‘The hell are you doing?’ He jerked his arm away and shoved her back. 'Don't pretend you can't hear that!’

  ‘Don’t do it, James,’ she urged. ‘She’s gone. You’ll never make it back!’

  ‘I made it to shore.’

  ‘Barely. And it’s different this time. That section is almost totally under, it’s a bloody tomb!’

  He stripped off his shirt. ‘I can’t leave her. I can’t just stand by and do nothing. Don’t tell me you can turn your back on it.’

  For a handful of seconds he stood silently and held Abbey’s gaze. Then he said: ‘I'll come back,' and crashed into the waves, rag-dolled and dragged under. He kicked against the currents and thrust himself up, plunged through the surface and began crawling out to the vanishing wreckage. Despite the raging wind the water remained tepid. He reached the looming shape in one piece and gripped a torn section of metal shredded away from the carriage.

  He kicked at the water and tried to pull himself up, but he couldn’t move. His leg was snagged. He kicked harder and realisation crashed home. The currents surging in towards the shore were clashing with those diverted by the carriage, creating something else entirely: a riptide.

  His legs rolled like pistons but he wasn’t strong enough, not by a long shot. He was whipped under, dragged into the uncaring stream. This close to shore the water was shallow, no more than six feet deep, but it was enough. He couldn’t breathe. The current gripped him, took him, dragged him along, his hands finding only insubstantial sand.

  No longer was he battling the ebb, no longer would his body allow it. The last of his air supply was being ravaged from his lungs, the reserves of his strength stripped away. For the second time in minutes he was a dead man, and this time a dead man with no one to pull him from the clutches.

  With nothing left to cling on to, he relaxed, rode the current carrying him away from the shore, the wreckage. He didn’t know how fast he was travelling as his body struck the solid shape at his back. He didn't feel the collision. But from somewhere buried deep, he reached out and gripped something solid.

  The current held his feet fast, but couldn’t take hold. He flipped his body and lunged upwards gripping something else solid, and something else again.

  As he broke the surface, his lungs flooding with sweet oxygen, he realised he’d struck a huge chunk of a wing and grasped a smashed flap.

  He rubbed his eyes, clearing them of salt. He could see the beach, he could see Abbey scanning the waves for him, he could see the section he’d been torn away from; not as far away as
he thought.

  A scream.

  The stewardess?

  Without hesitation, he dived from the wing and began crawling back the way he’d come.

  *

  A girl.

  A tattoo on her neck.

  A piercing...

  Several piercings!

  She was screaming, thrashing in the water, a jammed overhead panel wedging her tightly down. The rising water was lapping around her shoulders, pouring in from every crevice. She was not the stewardess he’d been expecting. She was someone else. She was someone new.

  A gap.

  He was next to the tattooed girl, as deep in the water as she. He could feel it pulsating around him. The girl was crying, cursing. She called him a cunt. A useless cunt. She was terrified.

  He asked her to feign to one side as he levered himself under the panel attempting to move it. It shifted slightly but did not loosen.

  The girl called him a faggot.

  He ignored her, considered abandoning her.

  A gap.

  He saw the tattooed girl with her face pressed to the ceiling. She was trying to gather the remaining oxygen before the water consumed her. He was doing the same. The panel had shifted considerably, but the girl was still not free.

  She disappeared under in a splutter of bubbles and curses. He reckoned he had about thirty seconds until he went under with her.

  With one final brace against the port shutter, he lunged against the panel, the sturdy rack refusing to budge. The water rose over his face and filled his nostrils. He began to sink.

  A gap.

  The rain struck his face as he lay afloat on the water. He was free of the wreckage and was being dragged. He could hear grunting as the waves thrashed around him. It was a man’s voice.---

  Where was he being taken?

  How was he alive?

  What had become of the tattooed girl?

  A wave crashed over them, filled his mouth with saltwater and a curious taste of metal. He decided his mouth is bleeding.

  A gap…

  13

  James rolled onto his side to a scramble of voices, male and female: Is he alright? He’s breathing. What happened? Found them this way. What about you, Teri?

  Teri?

  He lifted his stinging eyelids. The rain had gone, taken by the night which had also vanished, replaced by bright morning calm. From somewhere nearby, birds were singing as they dried their feathers. And the smell, the raw aroma of a tropical beach surrounded him, tainted with death.

  ‘He’s awake!’ someone yelled.

  At the tiny patter of sandy footsteps, the girl leaning over him shaped into focus. Both ears heavily laden with studs, one through her eyebrow and one through her left nostril, she wore a tribal tattoo which snaked up over the collar of her black t-shirt and spread up the side of her neck. There were more on her arms and hands.

  ‘What happened?’ James muttered.

  ‘Welcome to hell,’ the girl deadpanned.

  ‘Move, Teri!’ Abbey arrived at his side, shouldering the tattooed girl away. ‘Oh, thank god you’re okay, you bloody moron!’

  He sat up and rubbed the confusion from his eyes. Aside from Abbey and the tattooed girl, two others lingered. The first was the teenage girl in the shabby dress. Her blank expression hadn’t altered. The second figure was a newbie, a middle-aged balding man with a dark tan and rotund belly. Standing behind Abbey, hands in the pockets of his tattered grey suit, he watched the scene closely, unsmiling and serious. He was smoking something thin.

  ‘How long was I out?’

  Abbey took his face in her hands. ‘Couple of hours. What did I tell you? No one can fight currents like that, you’re lucky Sebastian came along when he did.’

  James glanced up at the smoking man. ‘You pulled me out of there?’

  ‘I was in the area, chief,’ Sebastian replied, the hint of a smile creeping onto his face.

  Shakily, James climbed to his feet and ran his fingers through his hair. It was knotted, sandy. Stepping to Sebastian, he held out his hand. The smoking man shook it.

  ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sebastian, heavy traces of South African in his accent.

  ‘He rescued Teri too,’ Abbey threw in. ‘Dragged you both right out of the wreckage in one go.’

  Finishing his cigarette, Sebastian flicked it into the nearest dying fire. ‘I was a coastguard in a former life,’ he revealed. ‘It’s no big deal. Besides, I literally was passing. I was swimming to shore from further out when I came across you guys. What was I supposed to do, let you drown?’

  ‘How about you, Teri?’ asked James.

  ‘How about me?’

  ‘You okay? You hurt?’

  ‘I’m alive, aren’t I?’ she murmured. ‘No thanks to you.’

  Abbey reeled. ‘You ungrateful bitch! James risked his life for you last night, so the words you’re looking for are thank you.’

  ‘Chill down, Oprah,’ Teri said. ‘Before you go getting all righteous on me, perhaps you’d like to ask yourself the question, did she want to be saved? Did this girl who, judging by her appearance is severely damaged, wish to be rescued by the knight in slightly off-white armour and carried away into the sunset?’

  ‘You ungrateful bitch!’

  ‘You did that one.’

  ‘You sure as hell sounded like you wanted to be rescued,’ James threw in. ‘We could hear you screaming from here.’

  ‘Instinct, cowboy,’ Teri countered.

  Done with the argument, Teri backed away and headed for the tree line, the back of her t-shirt shredded revealing more ugly black patterns on her skin. ‘When the search party turns up, I’ll be over here smoking a cigarette.’

  ‘Let her go,’ James advised. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘Who does she think she is?’ Abbey fumed. ‘Wish I’d known her attitude stank last night, I would’ve gone out there myself and held her under.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Teri’s not the problem,’ James agreed. ‘But she's right about something, we should sit tight until help arrives.’

  ‘How do you know it will?’

  ‘Because it’s twenty-eleven, and when planes disappear, people notice.’ James smiled reassuringly. ‘Okay, here’s what we do. We check every human body, try and find pulses. We need to gather all survivors for when the cavalry arrives, and we count heads. The last thing we need is folk wandering into the jungle if a boat turns up.’

  ‘Why do we all need to stick together, chief?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘We don’t need to do anything,’ he said. ‘But there is safety in numbers.’

  ‘Tell that to six million Jews. Besides, we’ve checked the handful around us, there aren’t any more.’

  ‘They were on the plane, Sebastian, so they're here somewhere. Two hundred-plus people don’t just evaporate.’

  ‘This two hundred-plus people do.’

  At the tree line, Teri had planted her behind on the sand and was toking on a cigarette. Like the Australian, they would have to abandon her and catch up with her later.

  Already James could tell the day was going to be a firetrap, the rising sun beginning to get serious.

  ‘What do you suppose that is?’ Sebastian piped up finally.

  In the adjacent bay a huge towering chimney of smoke funnelled into the sky.

  ‘Looks to me like a fire’s just gone out,’ Abbey suggested.

  James agreed. ‘Looks to me like a good place to start.’

  14

  With the fires blown out and most of the charred debris cooling, it was easy to cross the beach. Single-file, Abbey led the group. Behind her was the girl who seemed to have taken a shine to her. She wondered why the young girl hadn’t requested they search for her family members. Instead she’d merely followed the pack as though in a trance.

  Nearing the end of the inlet, a thin gulley of water streamed from the jungle and flowed into the sea. It wasn
’t wide enough to give them any problems. Directly beyond the separating outcrop, the stack of smoke dispersed into the bluing sky.

  ‘Want me to go first?’ James called from the back of the line.

  ‘No, I got it.' Hauling herself up onto the first boulder, Abbey glanced down at the trio watching her from the sand. ‘Piece of cake,’ she grinned.

  Her confidence grew as she bounded from one rock to another, Sebastian behind her, then the girl, and finally James. Her eyes lingered too long on James as he climbed, and she glanced away coyly.

  One by one the others reached the top of the divide, their eyes settling on the source of the smoke. Buried in the white sand halfway along the next beach was the first hundred feet of the plane, part of one wing still attached. Its jet engine, still attempting to rotate, coughed out the pale grey smoke. The nose cone had ploughed into the sand and created a furrow right up to, and beyond, the tree line: an object and a location sharing no common ground. The remainder of the beach was largely untouched.

  ‘Wow,’ James muttered at last. ‘Does anybody else feel kind of…’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sebastian agreed.

  ‘But also kind of…’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You know what it’s going to be like in there, right?’

  Abbey began making her way down the rocks and across the sand. At the wreckage she paused at the hatch door. It was hanging from its enormous hinges, a thin residue of rainwater dripping steadily from it. Beyond the door was blackness.

  ‘You sure you want to go in there?’ James had arrived at her side, his clear blue eyes scanning her face.

  ‘Give me a boost, will you.’

  Sebastian and the girl arrived at last, both of them eying the oily darkness.

  ‘I think I can speak for both me and the girl when I say we don’t want to go in there,’ Sebastian declared.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Abbey. ‘Stay out here, James and I will take a look.’