“He is unaccounted for, Lleyton,” Melanie said. “We think some were thrown out of the plane. One of those swam back, so maybe there is hope.”
“Yah, hope,” he said as his eyes closed.
The flight attendant reached to Gray’s arm. “Thank you, Mister…”
“Gray, my name is Gray.”
“Thank you Mister Gray.”
“You are very welcome, but you do not need the mister. What is your name?”
The young woman had the features of many of the women Gray had seen in Kuala Lumpur although a bit taller than the average Malay woman. He recalled that Emirates had height minimums for their attendants. The symmetry and proportions of her face and figure were perfection and her skin flawless. She had on only a white blouse and lavender panties.
“Oh, yes. Dayah binti Nadzrin.”
“What does your culture allow me to call you?”
The young woman smiled. “Dayah, only Dayah, please.”
“Thank you, Dayah.” Gray turned and gazed at the four bodies; Sani, the Japanese woman, and two of the flight attendants. “What is Malik’s condition?”
Melanie answered, “He was breathing and not bleeding much but he is not conscious.”
“What condition are you guys in?” Gray asked the group.
“Like we’ve been in the cage with Kirill Orlovski,” Lex laughed. He did look like he had been beaten up in an MMA fight. One eye was swollen nearly shut and his face and arms were scratched up.
Gray glanced at the slender flight attendant and she blushed, saying, “I very lucky. I have bump on head only.” She patted the top of her head.
Anna said, “I have strains that I know from experience are going to hurt like hell tomorrow, and some big bruises. The good side is I don’t even feel my wrist injury with this.” She held up her left arm and showed a bruise forming that stretched from her forearm to her shoulder. She glanced at Gray and suddenly grinned and then turned and jogged toward the trees.
Melanie’s face was scratched and blood had run from a head wound but it had begun to dry. She lifted her blouse and revealed an angry bruise forming on her rib cage. “My right shoulder does not feel right and I think I swallowed too much sea water and I feel sick. Lex tells me you brought me up, but all I remember is a terrible blind panic. Thank you, Gray.”
“You are welcome. I understand Anna brought me up, twice.”
Melanie nodded, grinning. “She got kind of bossy trying to get help to get you in. I thought she was going to punch the pretty boy over there for not helping her.” She nodded toward the man lying near the old Japanese man. “Besides trying to breathe water like a fish, how about you?”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk tomorrow. I think my knees were bent the wrong way and my arms must have been pulled from their sockets and I think I inhaled some of that jet fuel,” Gray said and stood. His eyes stung from the salt and jet fuel and every joint in his body ached and he wished he could just go into the shade and sleep but there were things he thought should be taken care of first. He turned to the others. “Guys, I don’t want to sound like an asshole but there are some things we should do and check on. I suggest we get the old man and the pretty boy and start discussing what we can do.”
Anna returned and held out Gray’s wet trousers. “You have nice legs but you may want these,” she laughed. She had her slacks and top on now and they were still wet.
Gray felt his face flush. His boxers were pretty revealing. “Thanks, Anna. You are taking awfully good care of me.”
“You are very welcome.”
Gray felt like taking the young woman into his arms and hugging her but he resisted. He did reach and squeeze her hand and she returned the pressure.
He slipped on his soggy trousers and said in surprise, “My cell phone stayed in my pocket.” After pulling out the SIM card, shaking the phone and blowing into the slot, and then replacing the card, he was further surprised when the phone came on and he was able to bring up the compass function, the only thing besides the clock and GPS function he could expect to work on the island. The compass only verified what he had deduced from the location of the sun, that they were on the west side of the island and the beach they were on ran north and south. He gazed out past the wreck where debris was drifting to the northwest. There were likely bodies amongst it but there was little they could do about that. None of the larger pieces were waving to get their attention so he did not think anyone else was alive out there.
Melanie broke his reverie. “Maybe we should move Lleyton first. And then check on Malik and the other guy.”
“You are right, Melanie. Let’s find a shady place back in the trees that we can leave them to rest awhile.”
“I’ll look,” Lex said and sprinted up the beach.
While Lex was gone, Gray laid out his soggy wallet on the sand to dry and then walked over to the old Japanese man. The small man had thick, unruly grey hair, brown blotches on his face and was slightly stooped. He was barefoot but black oxfords with black socks lying across them to dry sat beside him. Gray knelt to one side of the old man so he did not block the man’s view of his wife. “Sir, do you speak English?”
The old man lifted his gaze to Gray. “I do.”
“Good. My name is Gray. We are going to discuss things we need to do to survive and maybe get help for the badly injured young man over there. Will you join us?”
“How can I be of any help?” he said in a fatalistic tone.
“I am very sorry for the loss of your mate. Were you married long?”
“All of our adult lives. We raised children and grandchildren. This time was for us.”
“I had not been married as long as that but I know what it is like to lose a wife.” That was not a total lie. He and his wife had divorced four years ago and the pain had been nearly unbearable for him.
The old man rose and brushed sand from his wet pants. Gray believed the old man must have incredible heart to have made the swim in clothes and pulling the body of his wife. “As soon as we get the young man and the Emirates rep down by the beach moved to shade we will discuss what we can do.”
The old man nodded.
Gray stepped over to the Latin looking man who was gazing up at him. He was a very handsome man with curly black hair and a strong jaw darkened by designer stubble. His black slacks and black body shirt were wet and his shoes were beside him, drying. He was slender but well proportioned and if he were standing, probably close to Gray’s height. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes. Is that all you speak?”
For a moment Gary thought the man was sincerely asking if he spoke another language but the tone and the sneer on the man’s face belied that. Gray was not easily riled but he felt a momentary rush of adrenalin despite his fatigue. “Je parle Français, Espanol und ein kleines bisschen Deutsch. Why do you ask?” he replied and then felt like he had been manipulated into defending himself. He was trying hard not to get pissed
The man grinned but it did not look like it was meant to be friendly. “Most Americans require everyone else to speak English so they can communicate.”
The man’s accent Gray could not place. It sounded a bit like Anna’s but also Latin American. He glanced back at the others gathered around Lleyton. “I won’t argue with that but so far we have four first languages in the group that are not English but they all speak English so it looks like that will be the common language. My name is Gray. Will you join us?” He extended his hand.
The man rose and brushed his hands against his shirt to wipe off the sand. “My name is Paolo Molenaar,” he said and very briefly shook Gray’s hand and then indicated with his hand that he would follow him.
Lex was back and waiting by Lleyton. “There’s a big tree a short ways in that’ll provide shade most of the day.”
Gray knelt beside Lleyton. “Melanie, support his head. Lex and I will take his arms and torso. Anna a leg.” He looked up at the old man. “What is your name?”
&n
bsp; “Shinobu.”
“Shinobu, thank you. You take a leg. Dayah, Paolo, gather some bottles of water and dry blankets and follow us.”
Lleyton awoke and cried out in pain as they lifted him but when they laid him in the shade he thanked them. When Lleyton was comfortable, they went down to the beach to where Malik and a young man were lying.
When they approached, the younger man sat up and gazed at them with foggy eyes. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt, dark trousers and no shoes. He had strong looking shoulders and knotty hands that belonged to a laborer. “Weh were own ahn etlawn, ri’?” he asked.
Anna squinted and Melanie’s eye brows came up in puzzlement. Paolo laughed but it had the sound of a sneer. Gray laughed and said to the young man, “Yer sown loike me ownkle. Air yer uh Meck?”
A smile broke out on the young man’s face. “Bless yer, though yer be thrashed ef yer said that en Kerry.”
“What the hell are you two saying?” Lex asked Gray.
“He is speaking south county Irish English but I think he is befuddled and a little Gaelic is coming through. He asked if we were on an airplane, right. Etlawn is Gaelic for airplane. I said he sounded like my uncle and I asked if he was a Mick. Then he said bless you, though you would be thrashed if you said that in Kerry.”
The young Irishman’s eyes rolled up and Gray and Melanie caught him and let him down to his knees on the sand. In addition to scrapes and lumps on his arms and face, the thick brown hair on the right side of his head was plastered with congealed blood covering a lump the size and shape of a fried egg.
When the color came back to the young man’s face he said, “Me aid hurts fayrce.”
“It should,” Gray said. “You’ve taken a fierce blow to the noggin. Can we get you anything?”
“Aw just need ter lie doewn.”
Gray started to ease the young man to the beach but Melanie said, “He should not lie down. Not with a head injury like that. We should get him up to shade.”
Anna and Lex helped him get to his feet and walked him up toward the big tree.
Gray turned his attention to Malik. The man was unconscious but breathing, although very shallowly. Gray asked Melanie, “Have you checked him for broken bones?”
She shook her head. “No, we only dragged him out of the surf and checked for obstructions in his throat.”
Grey felt along the man’s limbs and found nothing. The man had some minor scrapes but nothing that could account for his condition. Gray felt through the man’s hair but could find no lumps. They removed his suit jacket and Gray unbuttoned Malik’s shirt and pulled up his undershirt. The man’s right side was turning black and ridges showed through his skin where his right rib cage had caved in. Gray did not think he needed to make any comment about how badly the man was injured. When Anna and Lex returned they carried Malik up to the shade in the same manner as they had Lleyton.
The young Irishman was sitting up, his back against the tree and Lex asked his name.
“Kaygun MuckGrey,” was his reply.
Gray verified the spelling with the young Irishman before he said to the others, “If you saw his name spelled it would look like Keegan MacGraith.”
That did not bring so much as a chuckle. The ambulatory survivors seemed to be tiring from their injuries and lack of food, as was Gray, but they all looked like they were waiting for him to go on, even Paolo. “Okay, guys, I won’t think of everything so speak up as we go along.”
The others murmured or nodded agreement. “The first priority is gathering bottles of water. I saw a number floating in the debris. It’s possible a tide might carry it all away and leave us without fresh water for the short term. I don’t know much about how the ocean behaves.” He glanced around for comment but only got a couple of agreeing nods. “There may be a lot of water in a cabinet in the front section but the visibility down there is terrible, at least until the sun is overhead. Anything resembling food should be collected too. There was a lot of fruit, cheese, crackers and candy in the gift baskets. Maybe there is something else in the front galley.”
Melanie raised her hand like a child in school and Gray nodded at her. “Won’t we be picked up within hours?” she asked.
“I hope so, especially for Lleyton, Keegan and Malik’s sake. But while the plane was at altitude and on radar, the co-pilot turned to a southerly course and descended like he was trying to reach Australia. When he reached sea level and was below radar, he likely turned off the transponders which would make it look like we crashed. We know he banked and turned north east, and before we crashed we probably flew thirty minutes or more at four to six hundred miles per hour. We are likely hundreds of miles from where anyone will look.”
Paolo said, “What is the term you Americans use so often, bullsheet? All airliners have emergency locator beacons. We will be found by noon.”
That brought a brief silence. Shinobu cleared his throat. “We all hope you are correct, Mister Molenaar, but it will do no harm to prepare for the worst.”
Paolo shrugged, sat down against a tree and closed his eyes.
“What about the locator beacons?” Lex asked Gray. “Don’t they work under water?”
“They don’t work under water but the ELTs are still our one big hope. When an airliner lands in water the ELTs are designed to eject from the aircraft, float to the surface and broadcast a distress signal to satellites. But in talking with Malik, I believe the hijacking was aided by mechanics at the airport. I think it is possible the mechanic or mechanics may have disabled any type of automatic locator transmitters.”
That brought groans and an ancestral curse on the mechanics from Lex. Gray went on. “After we get immediate food and water taken care of we need to find out what is on this island. There might be someone with a satellite phone just on the other side of the island.”
That brought grins and some hopeful cheers. Lex said, “So we gather everything under the big tree. What about shelter if it rains?”
“Good question, Lex. If we find anything like plastic or large sheets of metal, we should salvage that. We may have to build shelter.”
“We should collect the blankets,” Anna added.
Everyone but Paolo agreed to collect what was available along the beach and close to shore and wait for better light to dive to the aircraft. They found perhaps two days worth of water for everyone and several of the unopened gift baskets and some stray oranges and apples. The fruit had a coating of jet fuel making them inedible unless peeled or washed with soap. The oranges could be peeled easily enough but the apples required a knife. Dozens of blankets, some sealed in plastic, many of the tiny pillows and a half dozen boxes of tissues, mostly soggy, were retrieved and laid out in the sun with the hope that they would be usable when dried out.
Gray had removed his shoes while in the water but Anna had not recovered them like his trousers. He checked the shoes on Sani’s body but they were too small. He kept them thinking they might fit Keegan. He tried on Malik’s but they were too large for any serious walking. Melanie had earlier removed Lleyton’s shoes and they proved a good fit. When they had recovered everything useful, Gray suggested they explore the island. Everyone agreed with that but Paolo who was napping. Shinobu volunteered to stay with the three badly injured men while the others explored.
Anna gazed at the bodies down on the beach. “Should we think about burying them… if we are here very long?”
Gray looked at Shinobu for his reaction. The old man followed Anna’s gaze down to the beach. “My wife no longer inhabits that body. We will bury them if necessary.”
Lex found a three inch shard of metal in the surf and Anna peeled or rather scraped the peeling from a couple of apples with it and peeled a couple of oranges with her fingers. By unspoken agreement they postponed exploration until they ate breakfast. They had found some yogurt and cheese and along with the crackers and fruit had a reasonable meal while sitting in the shade under the big tree.
Anna spoke to Paolo in Germa
n and they had a short conversation. She offered him water and some food which he accepted. Keegan ate but immediately crawled away and vomited. He came back in tears and apologized. Paolo glared at him, mumbling something in German and not trying to disguise his disdain for the young Irishman.
Lex rose but stopped halfway to his feet and gasped in pain. “Oh, god. Man, I would trade my Carrera for a bottle of Aleve right now.”
Everyone laughed, groaning their understanding of how he felt. With much grousing except for Dayah, those going exploring got to their feet. Dayah was barefoot and Gray asked if she would be all right walking without shoes. She gave him a skeptical look. “I wear no shoes all time possible.”
The five grabbed bottles of water and walked first to the north along the beach although they could already see it was probably impassable because the shoreline became a jumble of rocky crags.
Directly back of the beach a rocky peak rose out of the jungle. Gray walked to the edge of the rocks and studied the peak. A sliver of a hole in the northwest side of the peak caught his attention. He climbed across the crags as far as he could go to get a better view. There was a man height hole visible only at this northern most position. It was about a hundred feet up the northwest face of the rocks and impossible to reach from the beach without rock climbing gear but it appeared the cave might be reached by coming from the other side where a jungle covered plateau stretched north a short ways out from the peak.
The group turned back and headed south. Three hundred yards down the beach from where they had struggled ashore after the crash, the beach curved in like a notch and the forest sloped gently up to a saddle between two peaks. They debated whether to immediately head inland or see how far the island could be circled from the beach. Gray just started walking south and they followed. The beach stretched on south for about five hundred yards until it ended in a broken and craggy shoreline similar to the north end. They turned back north, retracing their steps to the notch and pushed east through the dense foliage. Once they were past the thick growth along the beach, a trail wide enough in places to walk two abreast led in the direction of the saddle. Thick jungle of vines, large leafed plants, and tall trees lay on both sides of the trail. A small, orange and black bird called from a tree and something ground bound scurried into the undergrowth as they approached. Once away from the shore breeze, the sweet scent of unseen blossoms mingled with the earthy scent of the detritus littered jungle floor.
PULAU MATI Page 5
