Chapter 1... Welcome!

I'm not sure how other writers do it, but I seem to have this problem where a scene gets stuck in my head and won't bugger off again until it has been written down. If that scene falls into the general narrative of the series you are writing, that is great. I have scenes written out for the NewU series that won't make it into a chapter for ages yet, but they are there. The issue becomes more of a problem when the scene has no chance of ever fitting... because then it gets stuck in my head and makes is harder for me to write what I need to be writing... This story was born from one such moment.

So... With that scene growing into its very own story arch, I present you with the first chapter in a brand new and concurrently running erotic series. "The Island." To quickly alleviate any concerns, this does NOT mean that the NewU series has ended or has even been delayed. That will continue as normal, and you can actually start looking forward to the next chapter being submitted for publication in a few days.

For those of you just finding this story, I hope you are at the start of something special. This first chapter will set the scene and introduce our heroes but does NOT contain any erotic scenes. Believe me when I say there are plenty of those coming.

But for now... Enjoy.

*********

She looked pathetic.

"Please, I'm... I'm begging you. Please don't...leave." Her voice was hoarse from hours of crying. Her eyes were puffy, her make-up had clumped along her lower eyelashes, and she was looking up at me imploringly as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her hands rang each other, and her knees were pressed firmly together.

Shame they hadn't always stayed that way.

"It was a mistake. It was a horrible, horrible mistake."

I snorted contemptuously, not even bothering to cast the thinly veiled look of disgust in her direction as I packed the last of my clothes into a case. "No, Sarah, a mistake happens once, not continuously and repeatedly for months. A mistake is something you own up to, not something you hide and lie about and make every attempt to keep making. That is not a mistake; that is called an affair." My blistering, withering glare finally fell on her. "I am not the forgive and forget kind of man. We're done. Divorce papers will be in the post."

"You are a coward. Working at this is too much like hard work, so you are running away." she sobbed.

"Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night."

"If you loved me, you w...."

I spun on my heels, the furious flush in my cheeks blazing as the look alone was enough to silence her. "Finish that sentence. I fucking DARE you!" I snarled at her, the venom in my voice surprising both of us. "You have been screwing around in MY house. Not our house, mine! And you have been doing it for almost our entire marriage! You work in a fucking diner, I pay for everything. We have no kids and have been married for less than a year; no court in the land would give you half of anything. I could throw you out on your lying, cheating, slutty little ass right now. I could phone your mom too and tell her to come and pick up her tramp of a daughter, that if those grandkids she wanted so badly do come along, they sure as shit aren't mine. I could make sure that everyone knows the type of person you are. Instead, I am leaving. I want nothing more to do with you or any of this bullshit situation... You can keep all of it... unless you finish that fucking sentence."

"Why can't you forgive me? I said ``I'm sorry, I am sorry." She whimpered, her eyes fixed firmly on her feet.

"No, you're not," I replied levelly, not allowing her to hear the breaking of my heart in my voice as I finished my packing. She had crushed me in ways I simply couldn't begin to put into words, but I'd be damned if I gave her the satisfaction of seeing that. "You weren't sorry yesterday, you weren't sorry last week, you weren't sorry last month. You are sorry that you were caught, that's all." For the very last time, I looked into her eyes, the eyes that had made me fall for her so completely. "Good luck, Sarah, I mean that. Because you are going to need it."

"Please, Dan, don't go. We can survive this. We can get through this. But if you leave now, there is no chance, we can't, we.. we won't be able to get past this... please. We are Dan and Sarah," she sobbed loudly. "We are Dan and Sarah."

"There is no Dan and Sarah anymore."

And with that, I took off my wedding ring, dropped it onto the floor, picked up my case, and walked out of the house I had made into a home, forever.

I suppose I could go into detail for you. I could tell you how the credit card I had taken out for her had become maxed out, only for the company to come to me for payment. I'd gone through the bill of the card she said she never used, expecting to find fraud. Instead, I wound up finding hotel stays on nights she had said were nights out with her girlfriends. The purchases of lingerie that I had never seen, the meals at expensive restaurants on the side of town she said she'd never been to, Oh, and my favorite, the check-up and treatment at the local STD clinic for an infection I didn't give her. It took me all of ten minutes to get an electronic copy of her phone bill - I paid for that too - to find the hours-long calls while I was working, the risque pictures, the arrangement of meetings... Sarah was beautiful, she was funny, she was alluring, she was, I thought, the love of my life. But nobody could ever accuse her of being particularly bright.

We had been married for 10 months, and for at least 8 of those, she was screwing around behind my back... I had been paying for all of it, and she expected me never to find out, and I only say at least 8 months because that is as far back as I could bring myself to keep looking. For all I know, she could have been doing it for years. Yet she still acted as if I had somehow violated her privacy when I confronted her about it, then she lied, then she tried saying it was all in my head... And then, only after all of the proof was literally laid out for her did she finally admit to the affair.

With Lewis.

The guy who I had, until extremely recently, considered my best friend.

I suppose I could tell you all about it. But I just don't have the energy.

The house door swung open as I finished loading up the car. Sarah, her disheveled-looking blonde hair bouncing around her shoulders as she ran down the path, held the thin robe around her body as she ran to the car. "Please, don't leave, I love...." The last part of her sentence was cut off as I started the engine, turned up the volume on the radio, and pulled away. I didn't even justify her begging with a cursory look into the rearview. I just drove.

I was a block away before the tears came. But, like my father always told me: Never let them see you bleed.

An hour later, I was sitting in the bar, and Bill, the barman who had lubricated many a night out with Lewis and our group of friends, was looking sympathetically over me as he delivered my drink. I had emptied the money from our shared bank account before the drink had even been poured, not that she had ever put a penny into it. The cards had all been canceled, and the credit card company had been told where to go for payment for the outstanding bill. I had given her a house worth well over a quarter of a mil. I'd be fucked if I was going to leave her anything else. She worked, she could use her own money to pay for the lifestyle I had provided her, and if she couldn't afford it, then that was just too fucking bad.

Life lesson, Sarah: Don't shit where you eat.

They say hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. Well, my very male fury was not something to sniff at either. As far as I was concerned, my obligation to care ended when she opened her legs, and my obligation to pay her way ended shortly after. More than that, she was still lucky not to be sitting at a bus stop somewhere with a case of her things at her feet.

Fuck her, Fuck both of them.

"Dan, I... I don't know what to say." Bill said softly, leaning against the back bar and looking at me with eyes that almost seemed to leak sympathy. "I never thought that...." Those eyes flicked up at the sound of the opening door before his whole body tensed, and he stood himself up properly. "Lewis, mate, now is not a good time. You need to leave... Now."

Of fucking course.

"Why the hell would you do that to her?" The all-too-familiar voice echoed from behind me. "She said she was sorry, now be a man and move on! If you have a problem, don't take it out on her, take it out on...."

I hit him.

In one fluid motion, I stood, turned, and buried my fist into his face with a power that few people realized that I had. Lewis, like everyone else, forgot that I had a very physical job, I essentially worked out for eight hours a day, five days a week, and despite not dressing to show it off, my body was a sculpted mass of hard-earned muscle. I had never been in a real fight, not even in school, but the punch I landed on that piece of shit would have made a prize-fight boxer swoon. I felt the bones in his jaw and his cheek buckle and break under the impact, I watched his eyes roll as his head spun on his neck, and I heard the sickening crack as his unconscious body fell backward, his head smashing into the side of the bar on its way down.

It took him a few moments to come around, but the first thing he saw when his eyes reopened was me towering over him, my fists still clenched with white-knuckled fury at my sides. "Oh, don't worry about that, you piece of shit," I growled. "I hadn't forgotten about you at all!" I stooped down and grabbed hold of the knot in his tie, pulling him a little and drawing my fist back for another punch. Like the coward he was, he cowered, wincing and turning away, bringing his hands up to protect what was left of his bleeding face. The snarl on my lips curled into a vicious, taunting smile. "That's what I thought." I snorted, shoving him back onto the floor as Bill rounded the bar to end the fight.

"Dan, that's enough, mate. I can't let you do that here. I know you're hurting, but..."

"It's all good, Bill," I said, never taking my eyes off my former friend. "We're done. These two pathetic excuses of humanity are welcome to each other. But..." I grabbed Lewis under the chin and turned his head to face me. "The next bar you see me in, you will leave. The next time you see me on the street, you will turn around and walk away because if I see you first... Not even Bill will be able to save you." I shoved him back onto the floor again, pulled out a few notes for Bill with an apologetic look to cover any damages, and - for the second time in as many hours - walked out the door.

It was funny. The day before, Bill, Lewis, and Sarah would have called me a nice guy, a gentle giant. The predilection for a temper, let alone actual violence, was simply not something that was in me. It is surprising what a man can be driven to. I was just happy to be out of a situation that I didn't even know I was in.

********

Hey Stacy, It's Dan. I just wanted to get a message to you quickly before the rumors, lies, and/or excuses start. Lewis will be coming home at some point today with at least a black eye, probably more. We got into a fight at Bill's. In the interest of giving you the truth that I know you won't get from him, I punched him because I found out that your husband has been having an affair with my wife for the better part of a year, if not longer. Get a lawyer! If you can't afford a lawyer, let me know, and I will pay for it.

There are also some things that might give you a head start. Lewis keeps a bag in the back of your daughter's closet. He calls it his bug-out bag. I thought it was a joke, but he said it was for when you found out about the other women he had on the side, and he could get out quickly... I'm guessing it wasn't as much of a joke as I thought. There is cash in there, I suggest you take it. He also has a 'secret bank account.' I'm not sure how much, but I know he has a fair amount tucked away in there too. I don't know the details, but a decent lawyer will be able to find them.

I wish I had the strength to do this in person or even on call. I'm not proud that it has to be by text, but I think you can probably understand how I am feeling right about now. I am so sorry that it had to happen at all. If you need anything, anything at all, for you or the girls, please let me know, and it is yours.

Dan.

I should have felt bad when I hit send and tucked my phone back into my pocket. There was a part of me, however small, that felt like I was flushing a couple of decades worth of friendship down the pan, that felt like I was responsible for everything that had happened. The rest of me knew better. A few quick phone calls to the bank had canceled all the rest of the credit cards, except the ones I knew were in my wallet, and another to my lawyer started the divorce proceedings and changed my will to make sure that if I drank myself to death, she would get nothing. My money could be split between my parents and my brother. That bitch would die in destitution before I gave her a penny.

I know what you're thinking. I know you're wondering about the spiteful, vengeful, soulless excuse for a man sitting at a bar in the airport with little idea of how, or why he had come to the conclusion to go there. For the record, the logic was simple: I had leave that my boss had been begging me to take, one phone call got me as much of it as I needed, and I decided I needed to get away. The distance of that "away" could only be achieved with the utilization of civilian aviation... so the airport seemed like a good choice. Most of my shit was in my car in long-stay parking. I'd swapped out enough of my clothes to fill a small travel bag, I had gone to the ticket desk, asked to go somewhere hot, paid the fee, and here I was. I wasn't even entirely sure where I was supposed to be going. All I knew was that my flight left at eight from gate three... And gate three was right next to the bar.

Music. To. My. Ears.

Alright, I think we are far enough along here to set a few things straight. I had hoped to do this when my patience was a little less frayed and my mood a little less homicidal, but I have a plane to wait for, and this does not seem to be the opportune time to get drunk.

Let's start at the beginning. As you may have guessed, My name is Dan. I am a 35-year-old, soon-to-be-divorced guy from a town you have never heard of in the midwest... the cold part of the midwest, just to be clear. What I do for a living is a little complicated. On paper, I would be called a structural engineer, but in practice, there is a little more to it than that. Essentially what I do is build self-sufficient, eco-friendly houses and small office buildings. That sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but my personal role in all that is part engineer, part architect, part builder, and part accountant. It's the sort of job that makes people's eyes glaze over when you tell them about it. I get paid well for my work, and I live comfortably.

Or I used to live comfortably..., or I will live comfortably.

Whatever... There is comfort involved at some point in my living experience.

What the recently unconscious Lewis failed to appreciate is that far from being a desk jockey, my work was primarily spent on construction sites, where if I wasn't supervising construction, I was actively participating. And if I wasn't helping with the building, I was slogging shit around the worksite like a manual laborer. Eight hours a day, five days a week, every week of the year apart from Christmas, and multiply that by more than fifteen years of hard graft. That equated to the sort of workout regime that some men spend eye-watering amounts of gym time to achieve. So not only was I a little over 6 feet tall, I was in peak physical condition. My body wasn't covered in rippling muscles, but they were there, and unlike the gym guys, these ones were not just for show. They worked... as Lewis's face had recently discovered.

I still couldn't decide if I should feel bad about that.

I mean, I don't. Not even a little bit, but I am aware that I probably should.

Before the phone call from the credit card company, I would normally have been described as a laid-back, easy-going guy with a good sense of humor and a head of jet black hair that stubbornly refused to adhere to any recognizable style. My hair grew extraordinarily fast, but it all seemed to want to grow 'out.' As my former wife joked, I was a prime candidate for an afro. When I was younger, I tried to grow it long, but no matter the weight or length of my hair, it abjectly refused to fold under its own weight. I had given up and shaved it all off... right down to the wood. It was then that I discovered that I have a fairly odd-shaped head, and the bald look was no better for me than the afro.

The rest of my head seemed to follow the same principles. My face is not ugly but seems to be too far removed from any aesthetically pleasing pattern to be called handsome. On a scale of one to ten, I would be a solid five. That isn't self-depreciation or lack of confidence; that is just a simple acceptance of the realities. I'm the personality guy. Someone has to be, and that someone was me. I would never drop panties at 50 paces, but I could make a girl laugh until she peed herself. I had been told that was more important. For the sake of fair comparison, Lewis, the asshole, was a safe eight on that scale. That tells you all you need to know about where a lot of women stand on the looks versus personality argument. Stacy, his wife, was possibly one of the most stunning women I had ever seen, even compared to Sarah, who was hardly a slouch on that scale herself. What was worse, Stacy was one of the most decent, funny, and all-round nice women I knew. Even so, Lewis had cheated on a woman that most guys would sell body parts to date, and Sarah had shown about as much loyalty as one of those sharks who eat their siblings in-utero. Recent events had given me the impression that I was not the best judge of character.

Fuck, Lewis had kids. Who the fuck does that to his kids?? My taste in the people I spent time with was starting to look a little less than stellar.

Back to the point, I was a tall, well-built guy with a fairly average head balanced precariously atop his shoulders. Inside that head was a man with what I would like to think was a decent character, a good personality, a well-paying job, a good work ethic, and a somewhat sketchy bullshit detector.

But one with a 100% knock-out record in bar fights.

One for one... Go me.

When it comes down to brass tacks, what I say about myself doesn't really matter; it is up to you to decide for yourself whether you think I am a good guy or not. I'm just going to tell my story and let you make up your own minds. I will, however, concede that so far, you have seen me mercilessly walk out on my wife, punch my best friend in the face, possibly destroy said best friend's marriage, and spend a lot of time in bars. I am aware that I am not off to the best of starts.

They say that before you judge a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes.... That way, when you do judge him, you are a mile away, and you have his shoes. Just a little something to bear in mind.

I took another sip of my coke and looked around the bar. The barman, a man with as much customer service enthusiasm as the damp cloth stupidly hung over his shoulder, looked back at me with an air of contempt, as if he was doing me a favor by... holy shit, I really was in a bad mood. I needed to stretch my legs. I downed the rest of my drink, paid the exact sum on the bill, purposely not leaving a tip to the guy who apparently didn't want one, and headed out into the main lounge.

It was a typical international airport; lots of stores, lots of people, lots of noise, and nowhere near enough seating. I looked up to the information board, scanning down to find my flight number and noting gratefully that it was due to arrive on schedule. I took exactly three steps forward before something hard hit me square in the forehead.

I looked down as the offending object clattered around my feet. A plastic elephant staring back up at you is not the sort of thing that will ever sit well with the kind of day I was having. I looked to my right to glare playfully at the offending, giggling little boy, maybe four years old, and his mortified-looking mother. I looked back down at the elephant... The elephant had rolled to the side to stare at some random spot on the far wall.

"Dammit, Jonny, I told you no throwing. Do I need to put him in the bag until we get there?" the mother whispered, her voice almost hissing with embarrassment before she turned to me. "I am SO sorry! I don't know why he throws it so much."

I smiled at her, giving her a little bit of a wink before bending over and retrieving the plastic toy, stepping over to little Jonny, and stooping down to eye level with him. "Your friend is not very good at flying. He crashed into my head!"

Jonny giggled

"Look, right there!" I said, making an exaggerated gesture of pulling my hair out of the way and showing him my head. "I think it's broken. Is it bleeding?"

Jonny giggled again and shook his head.

"Are you sure? It feels wet."

Jonny kept giggling and nodded more energetically than any nod deserved.

"That means.... That means your elephant LICKED ME!! Ewwwwwwwww, that's gross!" even the mother stifled a giggle at that one.

"No, he didn't." Little Jonny drawled between fits of laughter.

"Then why is my head wet?"

"I don't knowwww"

"Hmmmm.... So what is your flying Elephant's name."

"Ellie." he giggled

"Ellie the Elephant, that's a good name. Any relation to Nellie?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. I don't think Ellie is very good at flying. Shall we listen to your mom and keep her nice and safe and let the pilots do the flying instead? It might stop her licking people's heads."

Jonny nodded with a grin, taking back the beloved toy as I handed it to him. His mother smiled warmly and appreciatively at me as I flashed her another smile in return. She mouthed the words "thank you" to me before turning her attention back to her son. I stood back up, decided that the main lounge was far too dangerous, and headed back to the bar.

Look! I am a newly single guy, in my mid-thirties, traveling alone. I planned on spending a lot of time in bars: Bars, pools, nudist beaches... Hell, if I could find a pool bar at a nudist beach, I might be at serious risk of spontaneous combustion!

Having spent most of my working life waiting for something or another to be delivered to the work site, or waiting for some form of concrete or cement to set, waiting was something I was very familiar with, and so the next ninety minutes or so passed reasonably uneventfully, if not quickly. But soon enough, the overly friendly voice warbled through the tannoy system to announce that my flight had started boarding. I grabbed my bag, paid my bar tab, nodded to the thoroughly unimpressed looking bar-boy, and headed to my gate.

A short while later, I was handing my ticket to the pretty stewardess with a little too much make-up than could be considered healthy and was directed to my seat on the surprisingly empty flight. This was technically the red eye. It may have been scheduled to depart at eight, but with a fourteen-hour flying time over the pacific, it was not the most desirable of flight options. That didn't make a huge amount of sense to me, I could hope to sleep for more than half of it, which made it ideal. Other people obviously didn't share my logic, though, because I was the only person sitting in my bank of three seats.

I always liked the window seat too.

With my bag stowed in one of the overhead compartments, I made myself comfortable, or at least as comfortable as it was possible to get on a plane, and watched the last of the passengers boarding. A short time later, the safety briefing started. I know it's a cliche on flights, and lots of people fly so often that they don't pay much attention to them. However, I hadn't flown in years, so I took note of everything being said. It didn't hurt that the stewardess giving out the briefing was fucking hot! The brunette who had welcomed me on board was somewhere behind me, further into the aircraft. She had been short, stacked, and unbearably cute looking. She looked like a girl who would giggle a lot. The one in front of me was taller, a little less busty, but had a mane of fiery red hair, flawless pale skin, and a smattering of freckles dusting her cheeks.

A small part of me felt bad for looking, still in that "spoken for and shouldn't be gawking" mentality. But a much larger part of me slapped that smaller part and reminded it - and me - that we were now young (ish), free and single, and could look as much as we damn well like, at least until it started becoming creepy.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I watched her. I ignored it.

The stewardess must have heard it because her eyes flicked to me with a smile as she continued with a very apt part of the briefing. "Cell phones are allowed on this flight, and access to the plane's very own wifi system can be purchased from the duty-free service. All phones, however, must be turned off or put into flight mode during take-off and landing. Announcements will be made by the cabin crew to let you know when cell phones are safe to be used."

My phone buzzed again... I kept ignoring it.

The stewardess's grin widened as I cringed at the almost continuous series of buzzes coming from my jeans pocket, but she continued on with the safety briefing like the professional she was, seemingly grateful that I was still paying attention rather than ignoring her like so many others often did. She stepped forward and leaned over the back of the seats in front of me after she had finished.

"It's okay, sweetie," She smiled beautifully. "We have about twenty minutes before we start to taxi. I'll let you know when you have to turn it off."

"That would be great, thank you..." I paused for her name.

"Hayley," She smiled, holding my eye.

"Thank you, Hayley," I replied, holding hers with as much confidence as I could muster.

She winked as she straightened herself up. "I'll be back to check on you in a bit, Mister Popular," she called over her shoulder to me as she sauntered off up the aisle towards the rear of the plane.

It took every single shred of my self-control not to turn around to check out her ass as she walked away. I pulled out my phone, and unsurprisingly almost all the messages were from Sarah.

Please come home.

Where are you? We can fix this. I know we can. I am going to end things with Lewis.

You put Lewis in the hospital! What the fuck is wrong with you?? He has a broken jaw, a broken cheek, and needs 10 stitches on his head!

You told his WIFE!!! She has kicked him out! You broke up a family! I can't believe you could be so petty! Well, he is threatening to sue, so I am going to pay his medical bills!

YOU EMPTIED THE BANK ACCOUNT! I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH OF MY PAY CHEQUE TO LIVE OFF FOR A MONTH!

There was a little bit of a gap in the time between that message and the next. But the message that followed was as predictable as it was pathetic. I could almost hear her thinking, "half of that money was mine. Oh, wait, no, it wasn't. That's okay. I'll just use the credit card. Shit, I can't. It was maxed out and deactivated. What am I going to do?" What she failed to realize was that my lawyer would be salivating over the "I am going to end things with Lewis" part. It didn't matter what she said during the divorce proceedings. I had her admission, in writing, that she had been having an affair. I took a screenshot of the message thread and forwarded it in an email to my lawyer, along with written confirmation of the change of my will and my intent to get divorce papers served, before finally reading the last of her messages.

Baby, I'm so sorry, please come home. I love you.

I stifled the snorted laugh, took a deep breath, and started typing. The plane around me jolted a little as it was slowly dragged away from the gate.

Sarah, this is the last time you are ever going to hear from me without a lawyer being present. I am not coming back, I am not going to forgive you, and pretending you love me so you can keep living in the lifestyle that I provided is fooling nobody. If you loved me at all, you wouldn't have spent the last year fucking my friend behind my back. I am not going to call you names, you are not worth it, but I have no doubt that between Stacy and Bill, everyone is going to know what happened within a few days. If they want to call you a slut, a whore, an ungrateful, lying, deceitful little bitch, or any of the other names that you absolutely deserve, that is up to them.

As for Lewis. I hope it hurt, and he should consider himself lucky that I didn't hit him again. If he wants to sue me, best of luck to him, he knows how to contact my lawyer. But considering you now have no access to any of MY money, he will have to find alternative ways to cover his expenses (and your affair) until his lawsuit is processed. Yes, I told Stacy, she deserved to know what a scumbag she was married to, but don't fool yourself. I didn't break up that family, you did when you opened your legs, and he did when he climbed between them. You both knew what you were doing, and you did it anyway. This is on the two of you and only you.

I suggest you talk to your boss about getting more shifts at the diner, because you will never EVER receive another dollar from me. I have wasted enough of my life, my time, and my money on you. You are on your own. I am going away for a while. I will be back to finalize the divorce. Goodbye.

The rest of the messages were from other friends within our little social group, all of them expressing shock and disgust at the situation despite me having a strong suspicion that more than one of them had known all along. Another was from Stacy. It was short but essentially thanked me for confirming what she had suspected for a while, although she was heartbroken on my behalf that Lewis had been doing it with Sarah. She had never been particularly fond of Sarah. I had known that for a while but could never work out why. It turns out that she was a much better judge of character than I was. She also passed on her love from herself and her daughters. "The Wives Club," as I had teasingly called them, the wives and partners of the men in our friend group had sent a few messages offering their sympathy and support. I didn't know most of them particularly well, yet they still seemed more sincere than my own friends. They had been horrified by the revelation and had immediately and harshly banished Sarah from their midst.

I still abjectly refused to feel bad for either Sarah or Lewis.

I turned the phone off and tucked it into my pocket. Given the hour of the day, the news would have spread by now, and fielding the endless barrage of calls and texts was not how I wanted to spend my first few hours of freedom. I was acutely aware that I should be heartbroken. I should be inconsolable. My life had crumbled to dust around me in a few short hours, and yet all I felt when I thought about it was... numbness. I wasn't even particularly angry. It was as if part of my mind had just slammed the door shut in the faces of those emotions and point blank refused to deal with them for now.

I knew they would come; those tears as I drove away from Sarah had shown me that the emotions were there. I also knew that when they finally did come, it would be brutal. I would be mourning the loss of my relationship with Sarah, the loss of my friendship with Lewis, and the unforgivable betrayal by both of them. The shame and embarrassment of being the guy that it had happened to. The weeks and months of people pussy footing around me, dreading the next time I would inevitably bump into them, wondering if they were together at that very moment - well, not that moment, I knew Lewis was in the hospital getting his face fixed, but later moments were anyone's guess. My foreseeable future was going to be spent trying to drag myself out of the pits of despair and depression, constantly wondering where I went wrong, why it had happened, and why the two people closest to me in my life had decided that I meant that little to them. Wondering if I should have found out earlier, wondering - knowing what I knew now - if I had been blind, stupid, or naive not to see it sooner.

I wasn't there yet, but I knew I would be. So - there and then - I decided I was going to make the most out of this trip, forget about home and everyone in it. I was going to live for as long as I could until I had to deal with that life falling apart.

I turned my head and stared out the window as the plane started to accelerate down the runway, smiling to myself as I felt that whole-body lurch as the change in momentum forced me into my seat when the aircraft tilted and then left the ground. As an engineer, I had a decent understanding of how it all worked, and every single time I thought about it, the same thing popped into my mind.

It was pretty fucking cool.

**********

It is a little-known fact that there are lots of movies that are not allowed to be shown on aircraft. Ones about plane crashes are the obvious example. But there are limits to how far that logic seems to go, or at least how well thought out that seemingly good concept is. For example, when Concorde crashed in Paris on July 25th, 2000, they showed it on the news... in the airport... where it had just taken off from. That's right... There were people who had crammed up against the glass at Charles DeGaulle airport to gaze upon the iconic aircraft, who were still in the airport terminal an hour later when the news broke, watching in horror as they realized that the plane they had just seen, and the 105 people they had watched boarding it, were now gone. All that remained of them was a field of flaming wreckage outside a Parisian hotel a few dozen miles away...

And then those people had to board a plane.

At some point, there had to be someone within the airport administration who thought that showing graphic and gruesome pictures of a plane crash to the people waiting to board planes was not the best of ideas. But nope, they showed it anyway. The same thing happened a little over a year later on 9/11. The pictures of that horrific event were being broadcast live into airport lounges when the second plane hit... air traffic was not grounded in the US for another few hours and not in other countries for most of that day. More than a few countries didn't ground flights at all, Russia, China, and India being the largest examples. They still let their passengers watch the news, though. Do you have any idea how many flights took off worldwide that day, whose passengers and crew had just watched the events at the twin towers unfold? Neither do I, but my guess is that it was a lot.

It is odd what you think about on a plane.

I was just grateful when the opening scene of Finding Nemo faded onto the screen. You know the one where that fish gets to watch his entire family being massacred by a predator and then is mocked for an entire movie about being a little bit overprotective of his only surviving child.

I should have brought a book.

***********

"And how is Mister Popular?" Hayley said with a smile a few hours later as she plopped herself down onto the seat on the other side of the aisle, her feet in the walkway and her elbow propped up onto the armrest.

"Most people call me Dan." I chuckled back to her.

"And what about the people who don't call you Dan?" She smirked

"They call me Mister Popular."

She laughed, a magical, almost musical sound that pulled a bigger smile onto my lips just from hearing it. "Quiet flight tonight?"

"Oh yes, the red eyes are always quiet, but this one is especially easy. Just the kind I like." she smiled with a nod, looking up and down the center aisle of the plane. "So, I'm guessing with how busy your phone was and traveling alone, you are flying on business?"

"Noooo, I'm not nearly important enough to get air miles." I joked back. This wasn't exactly true; I was extremely important and was already dreading the number of emails I would have to wade through when I got home; I just never needed to travel.

"Oh, so traveling for pleasure?"

"Let's just say I am escaping for a while."

"Now that sounds like a story. Nothing like an emergency vacay to push the reset button" She smiled, tucking an unruly lock of that brilliant red hair behind her ear. "We are usually rushed off our feet on these long-hauls, but I do like to chat to our passengers, if I get a chance, on the quieter ones."

"Then consider me your company for the evening," I answered, my smile seemingly permanently attached to my face and my mind wondering if I was actually flirting or not.

"I may take you up on that," She smiled back, partway between flirty and professional. "Is there anything you would like to drink for now?"

"I think I am okay, but there is something I have to ask, something I have always wondered about."

"Go ahead, Sweetie."

"The mile-high club." I started, letting her giggle a little before continuing. "Is that really a thing?"

"Actually, yes, not as much of a thing as you may think, but yes, it is one." She laughed. "And no, I'm not a member."

"There's always time," I quipped confidently. "So what do you do when that happens?"

"Nothing." She shrugged, trying to hide a little bit of a blush from my comment. "Despite what you may have heard, there is not a single rule saying that having some nookie in the bathroom is not allowed... Unless the 'fasten seatbelts' sign is on. And even then, they are only guilty of not following crew instructions, it is a slap on the wrist at worst. As long as they don't do any damage to the facilities, we let them get on with it."

"They're not breaking any public decency laws?"

"Well, no. Technically speaking, aircraft are private property, so it is not in the public domain. Also, they are in the bathrooms, so they are not really public either. More than that, it comes down to jurisdiction. Crimes on a plane are usually dealt with at either the departure point or the destination. So unless it is something serious, like violent offenses, most places don't want the headache of dealing with a misdemeanor that may have happened in a different state, maybe a different country, and lots of times, over international waters. I don't think any of the lovebirds I know about have ever had any charges brought."

"Wow. I honestly didn't know that. I bet you make sure they know they were caught, though, right?" I smirked

"Oh absolutely, that's half the fun." She grinned as she stood. "Gotta let people have their fun, and nobody likes being interrupted before they can finish, but we have to get our jollies as well." She laughed again. "Are you sure I can't get you a drink or something?"

"Will you be joining me?"

She looked up and down the aisle, seemingly judging her workload before answering. "Tell you what, if things calm down in an hour or so, I will join you."

"It's a date." I flashed my best smile, silently wondering about the ease at which this flirty demeanor was coming out with her.

She grinned a little wider, brushing her hands over her tight gray pencil skirt. "Looking forward to it, Sweetie."

Let's face it, there was very little, if any, chance of something happening with this stewardess, and even in the remote possibility that it did, I was rebounding. But given my situation, what harm could it do? Yes, I know, I was getting way ahead of myself. Still, I was grateful for the company. It would be a few hours before I would be tired enough to sleep, and even then, I wasn't entirely convinced that sleeping was something I would enjoy anyway. Tonight's dreams were going to be particularly brutal, so I would be happy to stave them off for as long as possible. If that meant a bit of casual flirting and some interesting conversation with a beautiful woman, all the better.

It's not like I had a wife to think about anymore.

For the briefest flash of a moment, I felt it. I felt those emotions that I knew were coming flare up inside me. The knot tightening in my chest, the lump in my throat, the dry lips, and the tremble in the heavy breath I sucked in. My vision blurred with the tears that gathered on my eyelids. Someone who had been in my life for the past six years was just gone. Excised from my existence with the same surgical contempt shown to a tumor in a cancer patient's body. One moment she was there; the next, she was gone. I was never going to see her again. That thought was immediately and mercilessly followed by the memories of why, the questions, the mental images, the hurt, the betrayal, and... then it was gone. The moment passed as quickly as it had arrived. Fuck, I was not looking forward to the shit storm that was in my future.

My head was not going to be a pretty place to be for a while.

It would seem that grief was the price we pay for love.

I turned my head, leaned against the wall, and stared out of the window.

There is something to be said for watching a sunset from the air. At least when you are flying west. The curvature and rotation of the earth, and the plane flying towards it, has the effect of slowing the sunset down. The sun just hung there, brilliant and vibrant and orange on the distant horizon. It was like a trapeze artist balancing on her tightrope, holding its position for as long as possible before slowly - arduously slowly - starting to drop down into the far-off ocean. It was, in a word, stunning.

It lasted so much longer than a normal sunset; I had spent enough time watching them, sitting on job sites, surveying new ones. One thing that all eco-friendly construction projects had in common was their need to be built in picturesque settings. But there was always a point when the site had been chosen and surveyed, when a shipping container - that would later function as an office - was delivered to the site, and then everyone else would fuck off home until construction started. The only person, sometimes for miles in any direction, would be me, and I would climb up on top of that container and just watch the brisk mid-western sun setting over the horizon. But none of them, not a single one, had anything on this.

As I said... It was stunning.

Eventually, however, the western horizon swallowed the last of the sun, and I watched for another hour or so as the bright oranges of the sky gave way to burning reds, the reds eventually fading into the dull purples of twilight before the darkness of the night crept in to steal the rest of the sky. Soon enough, all I could see in the airplane window was the reflection of the light coming from inside it. Before long, though, those too were dimmed, and I leaned back in my seat to will away the time until sleep took me, or until Hayley decided to pay a return visit.

Look, I know I was a bit of a mess. I know my head was all over the place. I know that thinking about spending time with another woman should have been the last thing on my mind. I know I was teetering on the edge of a precipice of anguish and pain, the likes of which I had never experienced before. I know that being on a plane with little planning afforded to what I was going to do when it landed was probably not the healthiest way to handle this. I know I should be seeking support from family or the few friends I felt like I could trust. I know that Hayley wasn't really flirting. She was just being friendly, she was doing her job to make sure my flight was as comfortable and enjoyable as it could possibly be, and I know that if I was wrong, rebounding this fast was not high on my list of good ideas. But I also knew I didn't care. I didn't have the capacity to consider longer-term consequences because everything in my future was tainted by the pain, the sense of betrayal, and the loss that I knew was coming. And if a moment's comfort with another warm body would alleviate, or distract me from that pain, then I would take it. I knew I was just drained. Not tired, just empty. I had been hollowed out to the core, every shred of love I had felt for Sarah, every ounce of trust in her and in Lewis, every sense of stability I had in my life and in how it was going had been violently ripped out of me, and the jagged edges that had been left behind were searching desperately for something to latch onto, even if it was only for a little while.

Suddenly, as if waiting for the right moment, it washed over me. The emotional weight of the day just landed on my shoulders, an insurmountable tiredness. It was like the adrenaline of the last handful of hours that had been keeping me going had just worn off, and I was crashing... hard. I was exhausted; sleep was going to take me whether I wanted it to or not. I surrendered to it. I allowed the weight of my eyes to pull them closed, leaned against the wall to the side of me, and slept alone for the first time in years.

*******

I had no idea how long I was asleep, just that it was not long enough, but I was violently and rudely awakened by the feeling of the plane dropping out from under me, and then the jolt of my ass catching up to it. I frowned and tried to blink the tiredness out of my eyes as the cabin lights rose back to their full brightness and a soft ding drew my attention to the "fasten seatbelts'' sign flicking on. I let out a soft groan, stretching the muscles in my back for a moment before letting my hands reach behind me and pull the seat belt straps from under my ass and loop them over my lap. The buckle clicked into place just as Hayley passed my seat, heading for the forward galley.

She picked up the phone for the tannoy system and spoke into it. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be passing through an area of... um... heavy turbulence. The Captain has asked all passengers to return to their seats, fasten their seatbelts and return their tray tables and seat backs to their locked, upright position..." Another jolt of the aircraft interrupted her, causing her to stumble a little before she caught herself and continued. "The bathrooms, the duty-free, and the drinks services will be closed while the seatbelt sign is illuminated. The aircraft will be turning shortly to avoid the worst of the turbulent air..." another jolt interrupted her. "...Please try to remain calm. Thank you."

That last part was said a little too quickly for my liking, and I became aware of the worried murmurs running through the rest of the plane as drinks and Ipads were put away and seatbelts were clicked into place.

A flash of light caught my eye from the window. Then another. I frowned and leaned forward to look out, cupping my hands around my face to block out the light from the cabin and peer into the darkness. I felt my jaw almost land in my lap.

Well, it seems we are flying into the ACTUAL apocalypse.

I am not going to pretend to be an expert on meteorological physics; I knew that storms over land and storms over water were very different things, but I was pretty sure that thunderstorms were never supposed to be that big. The clear skies of the sunset a few hours earlier had been filled with a deathly, inky blackness. It was night, it was dark, I hadn't expected to see much and would have been perfectly content and comfortable with seeing nothing. But the lightning had other plans.

Towering banks of ominous-looking clouds loomed as far as the eye could see, flashing and illuminated by thousands - and I really do mean thousands - of bolts of lightning. Some of it forked between one cloud and another, some of it just flashed within the clouds themselves, and some of it seemed to snake and spread along the surface of the clouds like blood vessels under the skin, but there were so many of them that it gave off an almost strobe-light effect. Bright flashes of brilliant whites, of electric blues, yellows, reds, even some with a tinge of green. All of them gave a combined sense of terrifying foreboding. And they stretched for as far as the eye could see, in every direction.

Far from being able to see nothing, as I now wish I had, the light show put on by the uncountable flashes of lightning made even the most meteorologically uneducated person very conscious that this was NOT the ideal place for an aircraft to be.

I could see the spray of the torrential rain bouncing off the wings as they flexed and trembled, buffeted by what I imagined to be unbelievably strong winds. Those trembles translated into a steady yet unnerving vibration that ran through the entire plane. I could feel the aircraft being moved by the wind, with the pilots fighting to keep her steady. Lightning forked down beneath us, striking the barely visible surface of the Pacific Ocean, flash boiling a tiny section of water which in turn gave off steam, which rose into the terrifying storm, strengthening it just that little more. It was a violent, vicious cycle, and our tiny little airplane was stuck right in the middle of it.

This looked like the sort of storms that bible stories were made of.

I was looking out of the port side window - the left of the plane - and I was still looking out of it when the pilot started to bank starboard, elevating the left wing and my eyeline upwards. It didn't help the view in the slightest.

I had seen a faraday cage once while in college. Arcs of lethal electricity snapping around the room and hitting the cage with only a quirk of physics keeping the people inside safe. The lightning storm above and around our plane - dwarfed to an almost laughably pathetic degree by the scale of the storm around us - flashed and arced with such a furious intensity that I would have sold my soul to be inside one of those cages right now.

My attention was pulled away from the window as Hayley started making her way up the aisle, stopping at every populated seat to check that her instructions had been followed. She was, of course, the picture of professional calmness, but her white knuckle grip on the back of every headrest did not go unnoticed. She finally reached my seat, her eyes glancing down at my lap to check my belt before smiling up at me. "Raincheck on that chat?" she said, an edge of nervousness in her voice.

"Called on account of weather, huh?" I tried to joke back, significantly more than an edge in mine.

The plane jolted again, causing her to stumble forward and onto my seat. I lifted my hands and caught her before she fell properly, holding her until she steadied herself on the seat next to me. Neither of us commented on the fact that my hand had, for more than a few seconds, been cupped around her breast. She smiled, blowing another stray lock of hair from her face as she laughed politely. "I knew I should have worn my sensible shoes."

It was at that moment her eyes glanced past me and out of the window.

There is a look. You see it in Doctors when they are trying to be delicate in delivering bad news. When they say things like "you are very sick," when what they really mean is "you are fucked!" They don't want to cause any undue distress, they are trying to be professional, and they are trying to avoid the sort of questions that can only be answered by a circus tent and a crystal ball, but there is always a look. That was the look that washed over Hayley's face as she gazed out at the storm. I have no shame in saying that it probably matched the look of abject terror that had been on mine a few moments earlier.

She blinked and pulled her eyes away, clearing her throat and forcing that professional, calming smile back onto her face, despite the fact that her fingers were playing with the seatbelt of the unoccupied chair. "I need to... Um... I need to check on the other passengers." She stood as the plane started to level out, the Captain apparently being satisfied that this new heading would take us around the worst of the storm rather than directly through it. I wholeheartedly endorsed his decision.

Hayley flashed one more glance out of the window, gave another professional smile, and then stood back up and made her way further back into the plane. I turned in my seat to watch her. Most people, by this point, had realized that the instruction to fasten seatbelts was not one to be ignored and that the crew was not messing around. But even with the passengers having done most of the work already, Hayley was moving noticeably faster. She met the pretty brunette stewardess about halfway down the aisle, leaning in and whispering something into her ear. The Brunette bent forward over one of the seats and looked out of the window for herself.

If I wasn't worried before, I sure as shit was now. The look of pure dread that paled her face was one that I felt in the very pit of my stomach as that persistent vibration being felt throughout the plane had turned into a full-blown rattle.

Of all the fucking days for this to happen.

It all happened in slow motion. Hayley was just passing my seat, heading for her own in the galley, as the first cracks appeared in the hull of the plane a few rows In front of me. I launched myself as far forward as I was able to while still buckled into my seat and grabbed hold of her wrist just as the skin of the plane started to peel back. The immediate rush of wind was deafening, a loud roar as the pressurized air in the cabin raced to escape through the hole in the fuselage, trying its hardest to drag Hayley out with it. A section of the plane's skin, four or five seats long, sheared away from the rest of the aircraft's body and shot out into the storm. There was the briefest scream as the now exposed seats were ripped from their moorings and out of the plane, taking their occupants with them.

Hayley's eyes were on mine, a look of terrified desperation in them as I held her wrist with a vice-like grip, and she clung onto mine for dear life.

Unlike what Hollywood would have you believe, explosive decompression in an aircraft is exactly that... Explosive. The sudden rush of air that sucks people out of the plane doesn't last for minutes at a time. It is over in seconds as the air pressure inside the cabin equalizes with the ambient air pressure outside of it. The screams from other passengers are drowned out by the deafening roar of hurricane-force winds. You can barely keep your eyes open against the force of it. My eyes were straining against the wind, and only one thought was on my mind... Don't. Let. Go.

The rush of air had ripped open some of the overhead compartments, and pieces of luggage and loose debris shot through the air, along with the compartment doors that had been pulled off their hinges and carried on the hundred-mile-per-hour wind. It was only by pure chance that nothing hit Hayley as she was held in the air, her legs kicking frantically towards the hole she was being pulled towards, but something hard smacked into the back of my head. My stomach lurched, but I refused to release my grip as I felt a warm liquid start to trickle down my neck.

The plane lurched downward as the pilot pushed the stick forward to dive the floundering aircraft, bleeding off altitude as fast as possible. The air at this height was too thin to be breathable. The rush of escaping air stopped almost as quickly as it had started, replaced by air being forced into the cabin from the speeds at which we were traveling. Hayley slumped into the seat in front of us before I forcefully dragged her over it and sat her next to me. Her hands were trembling violently as she quickly buckled her seatbelt. Bruises were already starting to form on her arms from where I had held her. As soon as it was fastened, her closest hand gripped back onto mine, squeezing it hard and clinging onto the armrest with the other.

She flashed a quick, terrified look into my eyes as the oxygen masks fell from above us. All professional decorum had gone as she grabbed wildly at it, caught it, and pulled it over her head. I did the same with mine, feeling the cooler air being fed onto my face before releasing the breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

The air was now rushing into the cabin; the pressure being forced in by the speed of the plane had the potential to do as much damage as the air rushing out. The pilot was trying desperately to slow the aircraft after leveling the descent, but we were still in the middle of a brutally violent storm, and our change in direction didn't seem to have done much to improve our chances...

As if to illustrate this point and highlight how much trouble we were in, the hole in the side of the plane was getting bigger.

I spotted a woman's face, wide-eyed in panic, peering back at us from her place two rows ahead... A man was in the aisle, trying desperately to get to her, fighting against the bracing wind as he pulled himself forward one headrest at a time. He was only a few seats behind ours when a sheet of aluminum from the plane's outer skin was launched through the hole and scythed through the middle of his head. His lifeless body slumped to the ground, blood arcing into the air as the top of his head disappeared in the wind. The rest of him crumpled to the floor before rolling backward under the force of the air. The woman's eyes just widened in horror before, with another soul-shredding scream, she was gone. Her seat, and the one behind it... The one in front of us... broke away from the plane. The force of it ripped out a large section of the floor with it too, and all of them were tossed out into the storm, hitting the wing with a power that sheared the seats, and their passengers, in two. The damage to the wing was immediately obvious, the aluminum hull around the dent starting to peel away, flakes of metal the size of a Honda being ripped off the surface before the wing started to buckle.

With a crunch, and the groan of metal, it snapped off.

The fuel inside the wing immediately ignited and started to burn. The bright fireball seemed to be held onto the edge of the wing by the force of the passing air. Only the fact that most of the fuel had fallen away with the rest of the wing had stopped the whole aircraft from exploding.

The plane started to roll immediately, and the nose dipped towards the tempestuous ocean. The stress on what was left of the hull jumped immeasurably. I could only flash a look at Hayley, her hand squeezing mine as her eyes fixed on her feet, hanging limply over the yawning hole beneath us where the floor had once been.

And then the plane was gone. With a stomach turning lurch, a jolting burst of motion, and a sudden change in the direction of the wind, we were falling. Our seats had been ripped from the plane and out into the night, completely at the mercy of the storm... and gravity.

Hayley's hand tightened onto mine, her eyes firmly clamped close. Whatever she thought was coming next, her eyes wanted no part in it. She just held her breath and held my hand. Despite the storm, despite the rush of wind, it was eerily quiet as we fell, at least compared to the deafening noise there had been in the plane. The only sound was the heavy, panicked breathing of someone behind us. Apparently, ours were not the only seats to have been torn from the cabin.

My eyes tracked what was left of the plane as it kept moving through the night sky, highlighted by the fire on the wing. For reasons that I may never understand, my brain was in full engineer mode. Yes, I was scared, I was terrified, but my mind seemed to be more interested in what was happening to the plane than it was in what would eventually happen to us when our free-fall ended.

The structural integrity of the aircraft had essentially been reduced to nil. It was clear from the subtle alterations in its flight path that the pilot was still wrestling with the controls, but any hope of saving it had vanished along with the wing. The air being forced into the fuselage had grown to far exceed the structural limitations designed to maintain cabin pressure, and I watched as, first, one of the rear doors exploded outwards, tearing another hole in the skin of the aircraft, before, with another sickening crunch, the tail of the plane along with several rows of seats and a few dozen passengers broke away from the rest of the aircraft and fell into the sky. The air inside needed somewhere to go, the airframe weakened more and more with every passing second, and the tail of the plane was in its way... until it wasn't.

What was left of the main body started spiraling toward the Ocean like a wounded bird. We were still falling when - accelerated by its single still-operational engine - the remainder of the plane smashed into the sea and exploded into a massive fireball barely a mile or two away from us.

I didn't have time to find the tail section in the dark sky before the ocean came rushing up to meet us. With a crash, a whip of my head, and a loud thud, my world went dark.

********

Under almost any other circumstances, the fall would have killed us. In fact, the only reason it didn't kill us this time was due to a combination of factors that physics students could earn a Ph.D. in analyzing.

So... physics of a falling aircraft seat 101

By a complete fluke of design, the heaviest part of the seat, into which Hayley, myself, and our unknown fiends behind us were strapped to, was not our bodies but the metal work that anchored the seats to the rest of the plane. That part of the seat fell the fastest due to its weight, which had the effect of rotating the seats so that the bottom rear corner was pulled downward. Essentially, we were falling ass first.

Normally, that would have turned the entire wreckage into a downward-facing arrow, with our legs forming one angle and our backs forming the other... the most aerodynamic shape it was capable of achieving. Again, that would normally have sped up our fall, but there was a storm blowing. With buffeting winds hitting us from different angles, including blowing upwards at us at immeasurable speeds, it caused the wreckage to basically wobble. That wobble increased the air resistance, and the air resistance slowed us down... not much, but just enough.

Lastly, those same storm winds had turned the ocean into a choppy tempest of breaking waves. It is said that hitting standing water at speeds over thirty miles per hour is, in physical terms, no different than hitting concrete. No amount of factors on earth could have saved us if this was a clear and calm day. But the water wasn't standing. The water was acting in much the same way as you would expect it to act in the middle of a Typhoon. The choppy waves undermined the tensile strength of the surface just enough for the wreckage to plunge into it rather than smash against it. The sudden stop at the end of the fall, which almost always kills the person falling, was not quite sudden enough to kill us. The impact that we did suffer was, in turn, mostly mitigated by the soft cushions we were still sitting on.

That and the fact that if you ever need to fall out of a plane without a parachute, ass first is the way to go.

Whiplash, yes. Pain, oh abso-fucking-lutely. Broken legs, possibly... but death? Not quite.

Look, miracles don't happen very often, and when they do, it isn't always wise to over-analyze them, but speaking as an engineer....

It was pretty fucking cool.

***********

I couldn't have been unconscious for more than a few seconds before my head jerked up, and my eyes snapped open. I couldn't tell you if it was some form of primal instinct or just a staggering level of subconscious forethought, but I was holding my breath. What's more, I could tell I hadn't been holding it for a particularly long time.

The wreckage of the seats was being pulled down into the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean, but my still-buoyant body was being folded in half with my torso and legs both trying to float back up to the surface. This decidedly uncomfortable position was causing my body to bend around the seatbelt like I was reaching for my toes. I blinked against the saltiness of the water, suddenly becoming aware of not only a human-looking shape hovering in the water next to me but also that the human shape was desperately trying to straighten me out to reach for my belt. My head jerked to the side; Hayley was still in her seat, still unconscious, and apparently trying out the same contortionist routine as I was.

A tap on my shoulder refocused my attention. The shape, a man by the looks of it, was waving something orange at me. It took me a few seconds before I realized what he was trying to say before I nodded and pressed myself back into the seat, and unbuckled my belt. The man-shape slipped a life vest over my head and reached around my waist to snap it into place. He must have been one of the people in the seats behind us.

I floated upwards, turning back to look at the wreckage. There were three rows of seats on top of the ones that we had been sitting in, but Hayley appeared to be the only one still strapped to them. I immediately swam down and started to try and push her into the seat while the shape rummaged around under it to pull out another life vest and then, after slipping it over her head, unbuckled her belt, snapped the waist straps around the unconscious stewardess, and pulled the cord.

The life vest inflated in a heartbeat, and Hayley was launched towards the surface. The shape, still holding himself level in the water, looked at me, looked back at the wreckage, nodded, and then pulled his own cord. By now, I was starting to feel the strain of holding my breath and felt around my chest for my own cord. I found it and yanked hard.

The ascent to the surface could only have lasted a few seconds, but every single one of them seemed to stretch out to an eternity. My head was craned upwards, watching the churning, chopping surface getting closer and closer, highlighted and illuminated by the still-raging storm above it. In the flashes of light, I could make out a handful of kicking legs, their bodies capped by the oranges of their own life vests and the life vests themselves, each giving off its own glow from those silly little lights that hung off them.

I burst through the surface of the water like something out of a Bond movie, sucking in a deep, desperate, gasping breath of air, only to be immediately swallowed by a towering wave. Coughing, spluttering, and half-drowned, I looked around frantically for Hayley. I spotted her a few dozen feet away. Two other women were holding her still-unconscious body and keeping her head above the water as much as they could. I started kicking my legs toward them.

The familiarly shaped man was next to them, waving me closer to them. "So..." I coughed out another lung full of salty water. "It seems the sky is... broken."

The man coughed out a laugh, apparently as surprised by my calmness as I was, grabbing hold of me and pulling me towards the group. Of the twelve seats that had plummeted into the Ocean, it appeared that five of them had been occupied, the guy who had pulled Hayley and me from our seats and two other women. Given how he was acting, this man seemed to know what he was doing. "We need to stay together," he panted, "For collective buoyancy. And we need to start making our way to the tail section, there may be more survivors, and that is where all the rafts are kept..." He turned his head to his right, "It's over there."

I could barely tell which way was up, let alone orient myself in a specific direction. But with no better options, and in the company of a man who seemed to be better at this whole surviving-in-the-middle-of-the-Ocean thing than I was, I saw no need to argue.

"Can you hold her?" One of the women asked me, nodding to the still unconscious Hayley. "I saw you.. I saw you hold her when the plane decompressed." She shouted over the wind after I nodded and moved to her side, wrapping my arm under Hayley's armpits and resting the back of her head on my shoulder.

"I did too," the man said as he coaxed the group into something of a circle. "That was impressive. I don't think many people could have done that. You probably saved her life." I looked down at her seemingly lifeless face and then back up to him with an arched, unconvinced eyebrow. He noticed. "She took a hard hit to the head, but she is alive. If we can get out of this water and to dry land, she should be fine."

"Land?" We were all shouting over the wind and constantly interrupted by the swell of the waves washing over us. Almost every other breath was a spluttered cough, trying to get the spray out of our lungs, the whole conversation was still being yelled over the howling wind, and the flashes of lightning overhead provided an ominous illumination to our efforts as the whole group followed the man's lead and started kicking in the direction he was leading us.

He looked at me with something of a shrug, although it was hard to tell with the effort of swimming. "We just survived falling the better part of a mile out of the sky, if there was ever a time to be optimistic...."

Flawless logic, I liked it.

"How do you know all this?" I shouted back.

"I'm a Captain in the Coast Guard." He yelled back.

"Well, that's... convenient."

The two women laughed. The man just chuckled and nodded. "Not the way I'd choose to use my experience, but yeah. We need to stop talking, though. We need to save our strength, just keep kicking... Slow and steady wins the race."

I am not going to try to guess how long we swam for - not only did I have no point of reference, but every minute seemed to stretch out for hours - nor could I tell you how far we had traveled. Every wave washed us high above the average water height, letting our Coast Guard leader reorientate himself, his head locked onto some fixed point in the distance before it dumped us back into the swell. Most of the waves simply crashed onto us. I felt like I had spent considerably more energy holding onto Hayley and staying attached to the group than I had exerted with kicking my legs. For all I knew, though, each wave was carrying us in a different direction from the one we were supposed to be moving. To my untrained eye, there was simply no way to tell.

And then the wreckage started appearing.

Hollywood has done an injustice to the art of crashing a plane. Aircraft that hit the water almost always break up on impact. That is one of the reasons why the Miracle on the Hudson was such a big deal. Captain Sullenberger landing an aircraft onto a river, with the pinpoint accuracy needed to keep it intact and keep all the passengers alive. was a feat accomplished against truly mind-boggling odds. The sections that manage to stay intact in an ocean crash may fill up with water and sink, but the vast majority of a plane will simply disintegrate.

Engines are heavy, they would sink like a stone, but the rest of the plane is made out of surprisingly thin sheets of aluminum. Even heavier constructions like the doors are designed to be light, they need to be to get airborne. But this also means that a very large portion of a plane's component parts float.

And there are a LOT of component parts, even when you are only looking at what was left of the tail section.

A section of the hull was the first piece to be spotted, bobbing lazily in the swell and seemingly unperturbed by the rise and fall of the storm swells. A door was next. Then a few pieces of luggage.

Then a body.

Face down, the lifeless corpse was wearing the tattered remains of a white shirt, most of the back of which had been stained a deep red. One of its arms was missing, and the long, black female hair was fanned out in the water around it. We passed her in silence, each of us aware that we had escaped the same fate by pure luck.

The next body was more interesting, at least to the Coast Guard. He was face up and seemed to only be as unconscious as Hayley. What was most interesting, however, was that he was wearing a life vest. The coast guard directed us closer, checking for a pulse before a disheartened look washed onto his face, and he shook his head. "He's gone." He said sadly. "But..." He frowned a little, appearing to my admittedly untrained eye to start rifling under his clothes. "I think he survived the crash. He's still warm, I'm not a doctor, but I think he died of internal bleeding."

One of the women spoke up hopefully, "Do you... Do you think there could be more? Survivors, I mean?"

The Coast Guard looked around. "If one did, there could be others. We need to keep...." His voice trailed off as he squinted into the night. My eyes followed his, trying to work out what he was looking at.

"HEYYY!!!" He suddenly yelled out. "OVER HERE!!!"

The rest of the group strained our necks anxiously, all of us squinting against the wind and the hammering rain to see what he was now waving at, his hands grabbing the whistle on his vest and blowing into it frantically.

Then I saw it.

A simple, flashing orange light; It was gone as quickly as it appeared, my view obstructed by a wave for a few moments as I grabbed hold of Hayley's whistle - unable to reach my own - and joined in the quickly growing chorus. The next wave lifted us higher, giving me the perfect view of the object that had excited the Coast Guard so much.

Then through the driving rain and howling wind, beneath the ominous, towering, deathly dark clouds, still rippling and flashing with sheets of lightning, was a single, blinking orange light. Beneath that light, however, was a large, round, orange life raft.

And peeking through the opening in the canopy that covered that life raft was a very alive, very human face, squinting through the darkness in our direction.

The Coast Guard literally ripped the light off his vest and started swinging it by its string around his head, breaking the link of our circle and allowing us to drift apart a little, still linked, but now forming something of a line. The move seemed to have worked, however, as the man in the raft started pointing in our direction.

Suddenly he jumped out of the raft, another equally alive-looking woman following him into the water a few seconds later. Both of them grabbing the rope that hung around the circumference of the craft and started pulling it in our direction.

"To hell with slow and steady." The Coast Guard yelled excitedly over the wind. "Everybody swim!"

**********

I feel I am safe in saying that I had never, in my entire life before that moment, been that happy to see another human being. The sense of relief when another woman appeared in the canopy opening, reaching down to hook her arms underneath Hayley, was beyond my ability to express. I helped her as much as I could, but with nothing but my tired, kicking legs for leverage, I had nothing to push against. The woman did all the heavy lifting as she dragged the still unconscious air stewardess onto the raft. The other two women managed to pull themselves in, followed by the woman who had jumped in to help pull the raft.

Ladies first; Apparently, chivalry wasn't dead.

I was next. Hooking my arms over the edge, I didn't realize how exhausted they had become from keeping myself and Hayley afloat for what seemed like hours, but with some help, I managed to pull myself inside. The others had dragged Hayley into the middle of the raft, laying her out next to another unconscious-looking man. The three women who had been in the water with me had joined the group of people already in the raft, a lot more of them than I expected, and the majority were huddled around the edges. One of them, another woman whose wet blonde hair clung to her face, seemed to be checking Hayley over carefully while another woman, the pretty brunette I almost didn't recognize as the other flight attendant, tried to cover her up.

With her legs having been underwater this entire time, I hadn't noticed that Hayley's pencil skirt seemed to have been torn from her body under the force of the impact. Leaving her in a delicate pair of black French-looking lace panties and what was left of her tattered shirt. I quickly looked down to check my own body. One of the legs had been ripped from the rest of my pants just above the knee, and my shoes were gone, so was one sock. But aside from a little bit of blood on the remaining sock, I seemed to be doing okay.

I pulled off my shirt and tossed it over to Hayley's friend. She caught it with a grateful smile, wringing it out and laying it over Hayley's exposed body as I turned my attention back to the gap in the canopy, reaching out to grab the Coast Guard's hand and helping to haul him into the raft.

Panting, heaving, and utterly exhausted, we both returned to the opening to help the last man out of the storm, the man who had jumped in to pull the raft to us, the man arguably responsible for saving our lives.

The Coast Guard reached out and grabbed his hand just as a wave started to lift us higher. The man grabbed it, his other hand reaching out to mine... I was inches away from reaching it when he turned his head to the side, his eyes widening in sudden horror before the wave washed over him. A piece of wreckage, a beige piece of metal that could have substituted as a barn door, smashed into him, the full weight of it landing squarely onto his head. The sickening crunch was followed by the feeling of a hot spray on my face.... When I opened my eyes, he was gone.

Just like that... he was gone.

My eyes scanned desperately for him. It was only at that moment that I realized that he hadn't been wearing a life vest. I turned to the Coast Guard. His face was almost as white as a sheet if it wasn't for the blood splatter coating his skin. "I..." he gulped, swallowing hard, his hands rubbing absently at the blood on his face. I couldn't bring myself to do the same "I... I had him... He was right there. I..." He slumped back into the raft, drawing his legs up to his chest and hugging them tightly.

The others in the raft looked over, their faces falling at the blood spatter on ours. I looked back at them and just shook my head. All of us, the whole group, were in too much shock to process anything more than what was in front of us. For me and the two women around Hayley, that was checking on her, for everyone else, all they could think about was surviving the night.

"Is she going to be okay?" The brunette asked the blonde as both of them knelt over Hayley.

Just as the Coast had earlier, the blonde woman seemed to know what she was doing, there was some obvious medical training evident in the way her finger felt around her neck, then moving over her shoulders, down her ribs, and onto her abdomen. "There doesn't seem to be any breaks and there is no sign of internal bleeding. You were sucked out of the plane?" She looked over to the women who had fallen with me, and both of them nodded softly. "Well, then she is a very lucky girl, you all are." Her bright blue eyes flashed across the raft to me. "She's taken a knock to the head, but I can't feel any fractures or contusions in her skull. We are lucky it is summer otherwise, we would all be worried about Hypothermia. Is anyone else hurt?"

We all shook our heads. "What about him?" Someone in the group asked, I didn't see who, but the blonde shifted her attention to the unconscious man next to Hayley.

The blonde looked over to him, pressing her fingers against the pulse in his neck before shaking her head. "He has broken at least three ribs, I think one of them has punctured his liver and he is bleeding internally, his abdomen is firm and he is getting very pale. If he isn't in a hospital within the hour, he isn't going to make it. He needs emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and I... I..." She sniffed hard, tears welling up in her eyes.

The brunette put her hand on the blonde's shoulder. "You are doing everything you can, that's all anybody can ask."

The nurse sniffed again and nodded, her hand coming up to wipe the tears from her eyes. The Brunette was tenderly and gently stroking her fingers through Hayley's hair. I couldn't take my eyes off her.

"She... she was holding your hand." the weak voice of the Coast Guard came from behind me.

"Who?" The brunette asked.

"Her," he nodded weakly to Hayley. "When they were both unconscious in their seats before we could get them out, she was holding his hand." He nodded to me. "And he wouldn't leave without her."

"And he caught her from being sucked out of the plane." One of the original group women added.

"I saw it too." the other confirmed.

Suddenly, all attention seemed to be on me. The Brunette was staring into my eyes; I didn't know what to say. "Thank you," she said finally. "I haven't known her for very long, only a few months, but she is a friend. I couldn't stand to lose her on top of..." Her voice trailed off.

"How many people were on the flight?" the blonde woman asked, her eyes never leaving one of her patients.

"One hundred and twenty-one," The Brunette answered after a short breath, her voice quivering. "Including five crew."

"How many of us are there left?" The Coast Guard asked before silently counting the crowd of us. "Thirteen." He finally finished.

"Twelve," The blonde woman said with a sigh, her fingers pressed against the neck of the man laid out next to Hayley. "He's gone."

One of the women in the crowd started to cry quietly. A small part of me wondered if the crying voice had known him, but the rest of me didn't have the heart to ask out loud. I had no doubt that at least some of the people in the raft had lost someone in the crash.

The vessel fell into silence. All of us sat in our places as the raft was tossed around by the relentless waves and blown by the howling wind. The adrenaline that had kept most people going since the crash was starting to wear off, a few people fell asleep, and a few others started noticing smaller, less serious injuries that the adrenaline had blocked until now. Even I noticed a fairly deep-looking scratch running up the inside of my lower leg, probably from whatever ripped the bottom of my pant leg off. But it was clearly nothing serious, I didn't see the need to take up more of our impromptu doctor's time with something so minor.

Hours seemed to pass. The dead man had been wearing a watch, but it seemed to have been broken by the impact that had eventually killed him. With no point of reference, there was no way of knowing how long our raft weathered the storm.

"Dan!!" A shout suddenly snapped everyone out of their dazed silence as Hayley sat bolt upright, her hands reaching out frantically, searching for something solid to grip onto, and eventually finding the hand of her brunette colleague. Her reaction was hardly surprising - the last thing she had experienced had been falling out of the plane.

"Shhh shhh," The other stewardess whispered softly, "You are okay, you are safe."

"Dan, where is Dan? Is he okay? We... we were sucked out... we were falling... How? How did we...?"

"Shhhh, it's okay." The soothing whispers resumed. "He's fine. He is over there."

I smiled weakly as Hayley's eyes followed the direction her friend was pointing. In the blink of an eye, she was in my arms, shaking violently as she curled herself sideways onto my lap. Her arms wrapped tightly under mine and around my back, pulling herself as tight and close to me as she could. Her lips were moving softly as she murmured "Thank you, thank you, thank you" over and over, soft, quiet, and trembling.

All I could do was hold her, running my fingers through her tangled, fiery red hair and whispering that she was okay into her ear. Keeping her tight and warm against me, safe from the terror that was blowing loudly outside the canopy of the raft. I had known this woman for only a few hours, and she had been unconscious for a fair amount of our time together. Yet I felt this immeasurable meaning in holding her, to being the one that she came to for comfort and safety. The only thing I wanted at that moment, second to surviving, was for it not to be a lie, for it to be true that everything really was going to be okay. Hayley just breathed in my arms, trying to get as close to me as she could. She, like me and everyone else in the small vessel, had quickly grown to hate the sound of that storm outside. The one blowing us further and further into the night.

Yet, as if our opinions of it didn't matter in the slightest, it kept blowing regardless.

By the time the sun came up over the Eastern horizon, it had blown us clear of itself. The winds had calmed but were still strong enough to keep us moving. A quick look out of the canopy flap showed scattered clouds and large patches of blue sky ahead of us, but the dark clouds still lurked dangerously behind.

Over the course of the night, introductions had been made. I have a thing for forgetting names within moments of being told them. I can remember details of measurements and finances for months after they cease to be useful, but a name? Gone. I remembered the Coast Guard's, his name was Raymond, but everyone called him Ray when he wasn't on duty. It felt more than a little rude to forget the name of the guy who had managed to pull Hayley and me from our sinking seats. The blonde woman really was a doctor, a General Surgeon at a moderately sized hospital in Indianapolis. Her name was Amy.

The two girls who had been in the water with us were called Zoe and Caroline but, with them both having short dark hair and being on the opposite side of the raft to me, I had already forgotten which one was which. The Brunette stewardess was called Hannah... Hannah and Hayley. There were probably jokes to be made about that, but in all honesty, we were all simply too tired. The rest of the group had given out their names as well, but they had been forgotten almost as quickly as they had been given. It wasn't that I was rude or disrespectful. I had been utterly useless with names for as long as I could remember. Most people had to be given nicknames. For some reason, I didn't have any trouble at all remembering those. For the first decade of our friendship, Lewis has been expected to answer to "Spud"... To make matters worse, I had forgotten after a few weeks why I called him that.

"I think the storm is moving off," I said, still holding Hayley but leaning to the side to peek out of the flap in the raft's canopy.

"No." Ray, the Coast Guard shook his head, "It isn't moving anywhere. It's just blowing us away from it. We could have traveled for..." He was rudely interrupted by the squawk of a seagull overhead. His eyes widened, and he froze for a moment. "Did anyone else hear that?"

"What, the seagull?" Hannah asked, looking confused.

For a large man, I am sure I speak for everyone when I say we were taken aback by the speed at which Ray launched himself across the raft and threw the top half of his body out of the flap. "Jesus, Ray, what the hell??" one of the soon-to-be-nicknamed people muttered as they were knocked out of the way.

"Where is it? Where the hell is it?" He barked, his head looking frantically into the sky.

"It's over there." I pointed out as if the answer was obvious, my head still hanging out from when I had been checking the sky. I was starting to wonder if Ray was feeling peckish and had suddenly developed a hankering for water pigeons, "There are a bunch of them."

"Fuck, Get in the water! Pull the raft with me! We have to follow them!" he barked, pulling his shirt off his body and tossing it back into the raft.

"What? Are you nuts??" I blinked back at him

He spun back around to look at me, an almost maniacal grin on his face. "Seagulls never travel too far out to sea." He breathed excitedly... he only elaborated when I continued to stare blankly back at him. "That means we have to be close to land!"

*********

There are a few things in life that will instantly make you forget about how unbearably exhausted and unbelievably tired you are. Food when you are starving, Water when you are dehydrated, An emergency bathroom after a hot curry... and the possibility of dry land to a raft of people marooned at sea. Ray and I jumped into the water and started tugging the raft as hard and as fast as we could towards the gliding birds. It was only when Amy asked how he knew if they were heading towards or away from land that he paused and slowed down the frantic pace.

For their part, the seagulls were generous enough not to fly too fast and often seemed as interested in us as we were in them. One of them even went as far as to land on the flashing orange beacon on the pinnacle of the canopy for a rest... until Ray threw a clump of seaweed at it to keep it airborne.

"I think they're heading back to land," he shouted breathlessly.

"How can you tell?" I panted back.

"They're not circling. If they were looking for fish, they would have found some. Hell, even I could have caught a fish by now. They would have spotted it, circled for a while, and then dove to feed. They haven't done that, which means they have probably already fed and are headed home."

"So... we keep following?"

"Yup"

"Awesome... more swimming," I muttered to myself sarcastically, but I kept kicking my legs anyway.

The sun rose gradually into the sky, my legs and body smashed through the wall that marathon runners talk about. I was well past the point of being able to be called exhausted. My head hung level with the water, only high enough to avoid drowning. Holding it any higher was simply too much for me. Ray didn't seem to be in any better shape. The hours seemed to blur together as the sun rose higher, and it was almost at its zenith above us when one of the girls lept up onto her knees. The closest she could get to standing in the confined height of the raft.

"I... I think I see it...." She pointed excitedly into the distance, a little to our right. "There... yes... Yes, I can see it!!" She was practically bouncing.

"Where?" Hayley asked, holding her hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun and squinting into the distance.

"There... umm... One O'clock,"

Ray and I turned to look through the haze.

It was almost as if the land had faded into existence in the distance. The shadow of the mountain was clearly close enough that we should have been able to see it for a while. But we simply hadn't, despite at least five sets of eyes looking for it. It was about two miles away, and our friendly neighborhood seagulls banked to the right and sped up, flying straight for home. Ray and I flashed a quick, determined glance at each other and redoubled our efforts, pulling the raft to follow them.

We can add that to the list of things that will make you forget about your tiredness.

******

Having not stepped foot on solid ground for what must have been at least twelve hours, and having never been entirely sure I would even live to see another twelve hours pass, the first feel of sand beneath my feet was almost enough to make me openly weep. Ray and I looked at each other, the relief washing over both of us as we planted our feet and stood up in the navel-deep water. The three women crowding around the canopy opening all shrieked with excitement before piling out of the raft. a few hugs amongst themselves, and waiting for everyone else to clamber out - they all helped Ray and me drag the raft onto the clean, fine, pure white sands of what appeared to be a tropical beach.

As soon as it was completely out of the water, I collapsed. I dropped to the sand, rolled onto my back, and stretched out my legs which were simply too tired to support my weight any longer. Ray dropped down next to me, a giddy laugh of euphoric relief falling from his lips as - being at least as tired as I was - we both relished in the fact that we would live just a little longer. "Thank you," I whispered to him. "We would never have made it without you."

"Well, We might have," he grinned back at me. "You'd still be strapped to those seats."

"There's always a fucking comedian." I laughed back just as Hayley, tears of joy streaming down her face, dropped down onto the sand next to me, sitting cross-legged to my side and waiting as, one by one, the rest of the group, all twelve of us, gradually gathered around.

Within a few minutes, everyone was sitting or laying around on the sand, letting the heat of the day dry out our soaked clothes. The only person not sitting was the only other man in the group. He was a thin, ragged-looking guy, maybe in his mid-to-late twenties. His nervous eyes seemed to dart around everywhere except at us, and he seemed to be rapidly tapping his fingers against the pad of his thumb.

"So all we have to do now is wait to be rescued, right?" Zoe said, or maybe it was Caroline. I still couldn't tell them apart. "How long do you think it will be?"

"A couple of days, at least," Ray said, pulling himself up to a sitting position.

"Days??" Someone else said in alarm, although I didn't know who. "What are we going to do for food? And what about water?"

I was letting the conversation carry on around me, but I could seem to stop watching the nervous-looking man. He appeared to be becoming more and more anxious by the moment. His eyes kept flicking over towards the group as if he had something to say, but they never seemed to focus on any one person, but more like he was looking at a patch of sand between us all.

"We will have to find some." Ray shrugged. "There has to be some sort of fruit or vegetation around that could tide us over. Plus, the tides will start bringing in wreckage from the plane soon, including luggage. Hopefully, there may be things in there that can help us."

Everyone instinctively cast their eyes back to the water. Everyone except the nervous-looking man.

"Hey, are you okay?" I called out to him after a few minutes of quiet had settled over the group.

He froze for a second before nodding vigorously.

"Are you sure? You don't look okay."

He seemed to take a deep breath to steel himself before glancing directly at me. "I... I... I have a form of high f-f-f-functioning autism. I find it difficult to communicate with people... but...." He almost visibly winced before continuing, as if talking to us was causing him physical discomfort. "But... but... We are not going to be rescued. Not for a long time. Probably not ever."

A deathly, almost hostile silence washed over the rest of the group. "We need to stay positive, Tom," Amy said after a few moments. Apparently, the man's name was Tom. "I know we have all been through a lot, but we can't give up now."

"Not giving up." Tom seemed to mutter, the top half his body now starting to rock a little and his words quickening into a loud and fast mumble. "Running the numbers, they are not good, they are not good at all."

"Look, man," Ray said calmly, trying to sound reassuring. "I work for the Coast Guard. There are procedures for these sorts of things. It's scary, we are all afraid, but I have faith in my people."

"Yes..." Tom nodded. He had now begun to pace. "Coast Guard, very professional, good people, but they won't be coming. I work as a mathematician for the IOA. I have run the numbers. They are not good, they are not good at all."

"Shit, the IOA? I've heard of them," Ray said with raised eyebrows. "The... umm... International Oceanic Authority. They advise the military, don't they?"

Tom nodded vigorously, "Yes, and the US Met Office."

Everyone seemed to suddenly understand that Tom may know what he was talking about. Ray, in particular, had gone from lounging back on his elbows to sitting upright. Tom was clearly very uncomfortable with the attention that was on him and had started pacing even more energetically. "Alright, let's slow down," Amy said softly and calmly. "Tom, why don't you explain the numbers and tell us what you are thinking."

Tom paused for a second, his eyes on the ground at his feet, before suddenly dropping to his knees, picking up a stick, and starting to scratch something into the sand. The group flashed a few uneasy glances at each other before we all stood up and wandered over to see what he was trying to show us. Hayley still seemed to insist on staying close to me. She had, at some point - probably when I was pulling the raft - shed the remains of her shirt and was now wearing mine. Being a good six inches shorter than me, it hid her ass a little better than her shirt had, but it was still a conscious effort not to stare as we all approached Tom.

He had drawn a very rough illustration of the US West coast on his right-hand side and a line jutting out from it. "Flight paths over the Pacific..." he tapped his stick onto the jutting line. "...follow a specific route, tracked by a signal sent to a satellite every hour. But mostly the updates on a plane's progress are given by the pilot." He was talking very, very fast, but it was as if he was talking directly to his drawing, or the sand it was etched into rather than to us. The nerves seemed to have left him with this subtle distinction. "Our flight traveled for about three hours after crossing the west coast with a cruising speed of 570 miles per hour. Which means we traveled between 1500 and 2300 miles, depending on head or tail winds and air pressure at altitude."

The math sounded solid so far.

"Then we hit the storm." Tom rubbed out part of the line and drew a large circle in its path, representing the storm. "The pilot turned the plane to avoid it. I couldn't tell how long or how hard he turned, but for argument, we will say it was 45 degrees. It probably wasn't, but that number makes the math easier to explain." He then drew a line off at a 45-degree angle before speaking again. "We traveled another fifteen or twenty minutes on that new heading before the plane started to break up. So that is about 200 miles in that direction before we crashed."

Tom drew an X at the end of the second line.

"...Lots of problems here. We don't know if air traffic control knows about the turn. Satellites only receive telemetry once an hour, and it only shows where the plane is, not which direction it is heading. There is no way of knowing when the last signal was sent."

"But the pilot would have had to notify ATC to turn, wouldn't he?" Ray asked, clearly following where Tom was going with all of this.

"Mmmm, yes. But an electrical storm of that size gives off a lot of electromagnetic interference. It is doubtful that his calls got through. Possible, but unlikely. More likely that ATC didn't know anything was wrong until the plane didn't make contact at scheduled times."

"Wait," one of the nickname women interrupted. "So they may not even know we have crashed yet."

"By now? They probably know something is wrong, but they won't know if, let alone where we crashed yet. Being optimistic and saying they knew about the turn, they will start looking in a cone-like pattern from the point of our last contact." Tom shaded in an area in the shape of a cone around the second line. "That search area is about..." He went silent for a few seconds while his lips kept moving. "1200 square miles, assuming that last point of contact was the turn."

"And if they didn't get the pilot's transmissions?" Amy asked, kneeling down next to him.

Tom shook his head. "Then it is the same process from the point they received the last satellite positioning data. But that could be anywhere. Maybe even from before the pilot made the turn. That search area just gets bigger and bigger. Using that cone pattern, and the estimated distance a plane could cover, plus allowances made for deviations in flightpath, that search area would be..." He frowned for a second and started scratching some numbers into the sand. I am pretty good at math, but he was quickly losing me.

Ray gasped as Tom apparently finished his calculations, tapping on the final number. "Jesus. That is a search area a fifth of the size of the continental US."

"Mmm, yes." Tom nodded, appearing grateful that Ray was paying attention. "But it gets worse."

"Wait." Hannah interrupted. "The plane has a transponder, it has an ACARS system. Hell, even the black box gives off a signal."

"Yes... Yes... The transponder and ACARS send information to Air-traffic control through the radar..."

Ray groaned loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"What?" Hannah asked, looking up at him in confusion.

"There is no radar over the open ocean..." he sighed, dragging his hand down over the rest of his face. "The transponder and ACARS would be useless."

"Exactly." Tom went on, "and the black box's range is.... Limited... and it's under a mile of water."

"Jesus, any other bad news?" Someone asked as Hayley's hand slipped into mine nervously.

"Yes," Tom answered simply. "It will take hours for planes to start the search and a few days for the Navy to reach this far. But they are looking for the wreckage. Even if they find it..."

"We... aren't at the wreckage." Ray finished for him.

Tom nodded. "The storm last night was a big one, very big, very strong. Winds gusting over a hundred miles an hour, they pushed the raft. We could have been moving as fast as twenty or thirty miles an hour... every hour... for most of the night. Plus, the ocean currents, if we caught one of them, could have pulled us even further away. We could be as much as 300 miles from the wreckage, and not even we know which direction we were traveling for most of the night, and even then, it wouldn't have been in a straight line. We could be... anywhere."

"And by the time the Navy reaches the wreckage, assuming they find it at all, they won't be looking for survivors anymore." Ray finished before he slumped onto the ground. "He's right. The chances of them finding us here are..."

"Depending on the size of the Island... about 270million to one," Tom finished for him.

Another deathly silence washed over the group, but Tom, having got out the information he needed, seemed to relax. Zoe started quietly crying... although it could have been Caroline.

"So..." I finally said after a long few minutes of quiet. "... We need to start thinking about long-term survival here. That means we need to find food, water, and shelter."

"I work for the US Geological Survey." One of the women said, stepping forward. "I can start surveying the island tomorrow, maybe get an idea of the layout, maybe see if I can find some water? But I will need help."

"I'll go with you," Hannah said, standing up. "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

"Elizabeth, or Lizzy for short." The woman said with a smile. Lizzy was middle-aged, probably a little older than me, but she wore those years well. Her body was curvy but fit, and her caramel-colored hair ended at her shoulders. She had a look that just screamed 'mom'.

"Okay, Lizzy, I will help." Hannah smiled

"So, let me get this straight," Hayley said from beside me, having watched the back and forth with an arched eyebrow. "We crash in the middle of the Ocean, and it just so happens that the guy we survive with works for the Coast Guard. And he has the skill and experience to navigate us back to the wreckage to find the rest of you," she nodded at Ray. "When we get to the raft, there just happens to be a doctor who survived as well." The next nod was to Amy. "We get here, and we find out that Tom is an expert at this sort of thing and is able to explain to all of us what is going on, so we don't waste time on trying to get rescued and concentrate on surviving. Next, we have a woman able to map and survey the island and able to find out if there is fresh drinking water here, and if so, where it is. I swear, if we have an Engineer or a builder here too, I am going to lose my damn mind!"

I coughed a little and raised my hand.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me!" Hayley exclaimed before a round of soft laughs rippled through the group. Even I had to admit, this was all very convenient.

*********

A few hours later, I was alone. Hayley was still back with the group but kept throwing glances my way. I wasn't sure what type of connection had formed between us, but for the time being, she seemed unwilling to be too far away from me. For now, she was happy as long as I stayed within eyesight.

Despite the extraordinary amount of exercise I'd had over the past day, my legs had started to cramp up sitting on the sand, so I decided to go for a little bit of a walk to stretch them. Only as far as the waterline, but the simple act of walking, my feet in the surf, was enough to make me feel a little better.

Out of everyone in the group, I seemed to be the one least bothered by our predicament. The last twenty-four hours had been life-altering on the most fundamental level. And the simple fact of the matter was that I was in no real rush to go home. Almost dying had put things into perspective. But far from providing the calm understanding that life was too short to stay angry at Sarah and Lewis, it had done the opposite. Life was too short, but to me, it was too short to keep parasites like them in it.

It was strange to think that even when we had been falling out of the plane, even when I had been convinced that we were all going to die, I hadn't once thought of either Sarah or Lewis. Neither of them had crossed my mind. I was subtly aware that I was the odd one out in that regard. Everyone else in the group had spent the hours since Tom's explanation talking about their loved ones. One of the women whose name I had forgotten had been traveling with her sister; she couldn't bring herself to come to terms with her loss. Another had been traveling with her husband and had hardly spoken at all for the entire time since the crash. She had just sat there, staring off into space, in a state of complete shock. Ray had actually been on his way to Sydney to attend the funeral of his mother, she had been the last of his family. He had recently started a relationship with a girl and was sad that he may never see her again. Most of the others had been traveling alone, although more than a few of them had family who would be getting some bad news fairly soon.

But for me, I had no loved ones at home waiting for me. Yes, I had my parents and my brother, but we were the sort of family who got together a few times a year around the holidays and exchanged the odd phone call between. Although I had no doubt they would be devastated on learning I had gone down with the plane, I personally was not close enough to them to miss them on a day-to-day basis.

I know it sounded petty, I know it was beneath me, but the only regret I felt at not being home; was the fact that I would miss the reaction of my betrayers, when they were told I had been lost in the crash. I know it doesn't make me sound like a particularly good person when I say that I wanted that guilt to eat them alive. But it was the truth and I wanted everyone around them to know what they had done, who they had done it to, and for them to spend the rest of their lives knowing they would never be able to make it right.

I doubted Lewis had the moral backbone to feel that kind of guilt, but a man can hope.

Still, it was a lot to deal with. 109 people were dead, and 109 families had been utterly destroyed. Given what Tom had said and the sense it had slowly made, it was very possible that all of us may be declared lost. The husbands and children of the people on the beach would all spend the rest of their lives thinking that ours had ended. That may not have bothered me as much, it may be true that I was the least affected, but that didn't mean that their loss didn't affect me at all. It didn't mean that we were all suffering from some sense of survivor's guilt, given the catastrophic amounts of death we had faced. A profound sense of grief was washing through our group, and I felt more than a little awkward at being the only one not feeling it.

But, for the foreseeable future, three men, nine women, and a heroically intact life raft were now on this beach, and we would have to find a way to survive. I turned and looked back at the island. It really was an island, as opposed to a scrap of land barely above the water. A small mountain started to climb out of the forest a few hundred yards from the beach, and it looked, from here, like there may be more mountains further inland. As long as King Kong or a hungry Dinosaur didn't come stomping out of the treeline in some lost-island shit, I was optimistic we would find what we needed to survive. The raft could act as shelter for now.

Ah shit, that reminded me. The body of the man who had died in the raft was still in there. He deserved a proper burial.

I turned to make my way back towards the group, hopefully, to enlist Ray to help me, when something hard tapped against my foot. I looked down to see the last thing on earth I expected to see. A small, gray plastic elephant stared up at me, tapping against my toes as it rocked in the surf. The entire right-hand side of her face had been scorched and charred black. My eyes widened immediately at the sudden recognition.

"Ellie... Jonny... No."

My gaze flicked to the open ocean, the sun just starting its descent off to the west as the emotional weight of the day landed on my shoulders. That little boy's face, the warm smile of his mother... It was all too much, I suddenly acutely felt the grief that I thought I was immune to.

I crumbled to the ground, picked up the toy, and sobbed uncontrollably.

********

Thank you, fabulous readers, for working your way through the first chapter in this brand new series. The Island will be another grand epic that will focus on storyline and character development rather than having sex scenes for the sake of having sex scenes. None of the series I ever write will be purely about getting my characters off. The little shits need to earn it. ;)

I will admit that I had a little trouble deciding if this story should be in the mind control or sci-fi genres of lit. Eventually, I chose mind control just because that is where the NewU series is, and that is where it was most likely to be found. But the story, as I envision it, could easily fit into either.

I have a fair idea of where this narrative is going, but I have been reading on lit for well over a decade and have realized that the stories I enjoy most are the ones that involve a little bit of conflict. Conflict with a character's inner-self, conflict with the wider world, or struggling to resolve a difficult situation that he finds himself in. So that is how I write. As much as I love that you all enjoy my work, it would be impossible to pen something that didn't give me enjoyment to write as well. Having something happen to a character and then everything just falls perfectly into place for them is, frankly, boring.

So no, life is not all going to be sweetness, roses, and unicorn farts for the newest of our heroes. There will be trials and struggles that he and his new group of friends will have to overcome if they have any chance of surviving. But it is going to be a hell of a ride.

As mentioned at the beginning, the NewU series is still very much alive and well, I have every intention of it staying that way, but writing this has allowed me to clear out some ideas that will allow me to refocus on future chapters for that series. For clarity, I should point out that I have no plans to make these two series related. There is no crossover in theme or "universe" between this story and NewU. I also always update my profile when new chapters are finished.

Thank you all for indulging my little literary hobby. The reception my work has received has always blown me away. The lit readers community are the best out there and you are all awesome.

Stay tuned for more from the Island.

Nova