‘What, no cheerful greeting?’ he added in his thick West Indian accent.
‘I’m…I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I thought I was alone.’
‘No need to be sorry, gal. In the gravity of our situation' – sichueeeshan – 'I am required to be as forthcoming as possible. Forgive me for making you jump. My name’s Gibson. Gibson Sommerfield. I was the navigation' – navigeeeshan – 'pilot onboard.’
In an instant she liked Gibson Sommerfield. He gave off a warming aura. There was little doubt he was a father. Abbey took a seat in the sand and asked him how he was feeling.
‘Like I’ve been in a catastrophic accident,’ he replied. ‘I can’t imagine that to be true, though, gal, otherwise I’d have heard about it on the news.’
Abbey smiled coyly and nodded at the bandage. ‘You mind if I check this out?’
‘James took a look earlier. Apparently I’m in need of some kick-ass penicillin. Not to worry, I’m sure there’s some knocking around here somewhere.’
‘Sure,’ Abbey replied dubiously.
‘James has been up since dawn,’ the pilot revealed. ‘Searching the wreckage for drugs. Then he took off with that kid with the afro. And the young girl. They went into the jungle to find some odd clearing, or something.’
‘Some odd clearing?’
‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. Saw it from the hill apparently.’
He went on to explain about the others he’d met that morning: Elaine and Eric had gone inland to find fruit and Sol had returned in the middle of the night. After failing to find a spot in one of the tents, the Aussie had flaked on the sand and hadn’t moved since. As for James, she found it amusing that Oli had become his second shadow.
‘Elaine tells me she heard static in the plane’s cockpit?’ said Gibson, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Yeah, for what good it was.’
‘It’s probably just broken. If I can get my hands on the correct components, I might be able to do something with it.’
‘You can get it working?’
‘Not exactly. I’m trained in radio communications. With the right working parts there’s every chance I can construct a pulsing shortwave frequency transmitter.’
‘And for those of us from earth?’
Gibson flashed his teeth. ‘Sort of an inside-out radio. But one that sends out a continuous signal. If any traffic passes nearby, we’ll pop up on their screens.’
‘What about this Black Box thingy that James was talking about? Doesn’t that thing give off a signal?’
‘Only for thirty days. I’d like to think I can build something a little more permanent. Nothing like being prepared. I did so many long hauls, one of my flights had to go down eventually.’
Abbey sat back, unable to tell if Gibson was joking. ‘About that. What happened up there, Gibson? I thought we were in more danger crossing the street.’
Gibson shook his head. ‘People do get run down, gal.’
‘Million-to-one shot, my arse!’
‘We’re alive, is that not enough? When the elements turn on you, all the fail-safes, all the precautions in the world can’t help you.’
‘You’re blaming this on Mother Nature?’
Gibson shuffled painfully onto his side. ‘We were levelled at thirty-six thousand feet. When the weather picked up, we climbed a little further to try and avoid the convective clouds. We figured if we could rise above the boundary layer we could smooth things out. At the increased altitude we were fighting draughts from below and above, nothing like any of us had seen before.’
‘But it wasn’t the turbulence that brought us down, was it?’ Abbey questioned. ‘My seat was near the wing. I saw the lightning hit.’
‘Lightning hitting an aircraft is not unusual, gal. But in most scenarios it’s harmless. Unless it hits one of the engines or the fuel tank it’ll normally just pass right through the plane’s shell. There’ll be a lot of static, everybody’s hair will stand on end, but then the charge will exit the plane through the tailfin or another extremity. In our case we were already having trouble with the starboard engine. It was no big deal, the portside would’ve easily picked up the slack. But that brings us back to your million-to-one theory.’
Abbey exhaled. 'Should’ve put the lottery on.’
‘No point, gal. You’re not around to collect.’
Pushing herself back up, she said, ‘All this is academic, though, isn't it? Because in your next sentence you’re going to tell me that you know exactly where we are, and search parties will know precisely where to look.’
The pilot’s ashen face remained stony.
‘Gibson…’
‘We were having some technical problems with the navigation equipment,’ he revealed hollowly. ‘North Shore was directing us in…but we lost contact with them forty minutes before we went down. There was no way to tell if we were still on course.’
The words left the pilot’s mouth with an undertone of apology, as though he was embarrassed. He struggled to meet her eyes.
‘Terrific,’ she murmured. ‘We’re on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and we might as well be on Mars.’
‘In a nutshell, yes.’ Gibson confirmed. ‘We could be anywhere within a three hundred mile radius.’
34
The further into the jungle they trekked, the denser the bush became. James had little energy for conversation so he was pleased his companions consisted of the silent girl, and Oli, who was unusually quiet.
Protected largely from the sun, there was still no relief from the sweltering heat. With no breeze reaching them, their backs were sodden, the trek turning out to be worse than the hill. It took almost another hour of searching before they stumbled upon the clearing. Grimy, sweaty, and in need of water, they sat for a moment and passed around a tepid bottle of Evian.
The clearing was exactly that, a clearing. A couple of hundred feet
