Unseen Messages

by Pepper Winters

  I hated myself for watching.

  I hated that I couldn’t stop my eyes drinking in glimpses of her naked back as she changed from t-shirt to bikini top now the heat had returned.

  My cock twitched as she struggled to tie the strings, wrangling with the black material still strapping her ribs.

  I was a damn pervert. A pervert who lay on his back giving in to weakness and injury.

  Estelle managed to complete the bow, before turning to pick up a few items and forage in the black survival bag the pilot had in the cockpit.

  What the hell is she doing?

  My leg and foot didn’t feel any better and the constant throb made my temper nasty. I’d snapped at poor Pippa when she’d asked a billion questions about the water collector. She’d only been inquisitive, but her questions showed me how much of a fraud I was.

  Estelle had given me a stern look, making me feel like scum (worse than scum, the algae infesting scum).

  Self-pity was an ugly monster, and I wanted it out.

  I needed it out.

  The urge to walk, jog, run overwhelmed me. But I couldn’t. And even if I could, it would be insane to exercise beneath the hot sunshine with no food or water.

  Conner stood, brushing his hands on his shorts. “Gonna use the little boy’s room.”

  He vanished into the undergrowth, reminding me another task awaited. We had to dig a latrine; otherwise, the bugs would be ten times worse.

  “We’ll leave when you’re done,” Estelle called after him.

  Conner paused. “Leave?”

  “Yes, to the helicopter.” She held up the Swiss Army knife and axe. “We’ll unscrew some panels so we’re prepared for rain.”

  Oh, hell no.

  “Wait a goddamn minute.” I hauled myself to my feet.

  Shit...

  The beach swam with agony. I wanted to punch a tree and vomit at the same time.

  Estelle didn’t come to support me, backing away instead into the forest. “I told you before, Galloway. You’re not well enough—”

  “I’m perfectly well enough.”

  Her fingers tightened on the weapons. “No, you’re not. Be reasonable. You’re borderline feverish. Your ankle is giving you grief. Conner and I can do this. We’ll be back a lot quicker than you would be. The walk alone would kill you.”

  My nostrils flared. “Way to make me feel completely useless, Estelle.”

  Goddammit, did she have to take every task away from me?

  “You’re not useless.” She pointed at the umbrella tree. “You’ve provided us with water, for goodness’ sake. You’ve guaranteed we’ll survive a few more days.”

  I shook my head. “I should be the one going back there—”

  Don’t make me say it out loud with the kid present.

  Conner had disappeared but was most likely in hearing distance. And Pippa, she already had a healthy dose of wariness around me.

  Not that I blamed her.

  But things needed to be discussed...dealt with. Horrible things that no one should have to do.

  “Estelle,” I growled. “You can’t go. I’m the one who—”

  “Who what? Needs to drag heavy pieces of fuselage back? How exactly? You have a crutch; you can’t carry large items with one hand. That won’t work.”

  She’s right.

  I didn’t care that she was right.

  This was about me being her equal. Me being worthy. Me showing her I was strong enough for her to lean...reliable enough to deserve her trust.

  And something else entirely.

  “I’m not talking about that.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  I glanced at Pippa. “Not suitable for—”

  She jammed her hands on her hips. The flat muscles of her stomach peeked below the black strapping on her chest. “You started this argument, Galloway. So finish it. Why should you be the one to—”

  Bloody hell.

  “The bodies, all right?” Breathing hard, I hissed, “The non-survivors. Unless you’ve forgotten, seven of us landed here and only four of us live on this beach.”

  Pippa pulled her legs up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them. She didn’t speak but awful comprehension filled her face. I wished she were slightly younger so she didn’t have a clue what I spoke about.

  Estelle stiffened.

  She had forgotten.

  I lowered my voice. “It’s best to deal with them now...” Before they start decomposing.

  Her eyes flittered to Pippa, tears welling.

  Gritting my teeth against the pain, I hopped over to her. My lips grazed her ear. “If we’re here for much longer, the kids will stumble onto their parents eventually. Do you want them to find them like that? Decomposing? Rotting in the—”

  She jerked away. “I get it. Okay? I don’t need to hear any more.”

  “No, you don’t. You also don’t need to go in there on your own. Someone needs to deal with it, and it isn’t you or Conner.”

  She stared at the ground, her face turning slightly green. “You can’t do it on your own. I’ll help you.”

  I grabbed her elbow. “Listen to me and listen good. There is no way you want to deal with a bloated body.”

  She tried to shake me off, but I didn’t let her go.

  My voice turned to a growl. “You’re not helping me. Got it? You’ve helped enough.”

  She sucked in a breath.

  I had no right to be angry with her, but I didn’t want her scarred for life. Once you’d dealt with something like that, you couldn’t delete it. I’d seen my mother. I’d seen another corpse after. And both times, the remains hadn’t been exposed to high humidity or sunshine. It hadn’t stopped the white-blue skin and dead eyes from haunting my dreams, though.

  I sighed heavily. “Promise me, you’ll obey.”

  “Obey you?” Her face pinched with rebellion.

  “Yes. Promise me.”

  “We need those pieces of fuselage.”

  My teeth ground together. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

  “They’re already dead. We’re not. If returning to the helicopter ensures we stay that way, then I’ll do whatever needs to be done—decomposing corpses or not.” For her brave talk, her body trembled with horror.

  Once again, we were in a stalemate.

  I let her go. “Fine. I won’t stop you from going to the chopper. Get what you can and come back. Immediately.”

  She sniffed. “In return for what?”

  “You don’t take another one of my tasks away from me. That’s my job and mine alone.”

  Her shoulders tensed, but finally, she nodded. “Okay.”

  Conner appeared in the treeline, frowning at the way we stood huddled together.

  Estelle exhaled as tears faded from her eyes. “I agree. As much as I want to keep you resting, I don’t have the strength to deal with a burial.” Her gaze softened. “Thank you for wanting to protect me. I hate the thought of you doing it alone—I don’t even know how you’ll manage—but I promise I won’t try to do it myself.”

  A certain kind of relief filled my chest. “Thank you.”

  We shared a smile.

  My heart coughed.

  I wished we’d had a different topic to discuss.

  I wished I didn’t have a date tonight with a fuselage-spade and three graves.

  I stepped back. “If you’re not back in an hour, I’m coming after you. Broken limb or not.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ...............................................

  E S T E L L E

  ......

  I’m loneliness personified. I’m without a map or directions.

  I want to wallow.

  I don’t want to wallow.

  I’m breathing exemplified. I’m a girl who’s finally found her path.

  Taken from the notepad of E.E.

  ...

  “THIS IS TAKING forever.”

  “Quit your
moaning.” I stuck my tongue out at Conner, even though it took every last reserve I had to joke. The past few hours had really hit me. The constant hunger switched my common sense to scattered thoughts, strength to weak muscles, and the unbearable desire for food to madness.

  I’d never been so hungry.

  Never been so eager to eat.

  But that wasn’t the worst part.

  It’s death.

  I’d kept my oath to Galloway and ensured Conner obeyed, too.

  We didn’t go around the front of the helicopter where Akin’s corpse lay.

  However...just because we couldn’t see him didn’t mean we didn’t know he was there.

  Only a few feet away.

  There.

  Dead.

  It didn’t stop the smell.

  The gut-wrenching, nose-melting, soul-destroying smell.

  We’d retched a few times as the island breeze wafted a particularly strong odour in our direction.

  Galloway was right. The bodies needed dealing with.

  But for now, we worked in stench and did our best not to focus on the cause.

  Taking a deep breath, timing it with fresh air coming from the south, I looked over my shoulder at the two metal sheets we’d managed to hack off. “Keep going. We’re almost done.” It’d been painstaking work and the tips of my fingers were blistered and sore. But we’d achieved more than I thought we would.

  The Swiss Army knife screwdriver didn’t fit perfectly into the fixings and the aviation rivets meant our tools were completely inadequate. The axe came in handy to smash some areas but didn’t help with the larger panels. We’d been limited to smaller pieces of the tail where the crash had already done a lot of the breaking apart for us.

  “I’m starving,” Conner muttered, licking his lips. “I don’t think I’ll be able to last much longer without food.”

  His fear was my fear, poisoning my heart.

  My head pounded with dehydration; my mouth no longer had lubrication. We were demanding our bodies to do too much without putting any fuel back in.

  We can’t go on like this. Not if we want to survive past a week.

  But I couldn’t agree with him. I couldn’t spill my terrors to a thirteen-year-old boy. Not when I was supposed to be his guardian.

  I forced a bright smile. “The minute we’re done, we’ll go fishing. How about that? We’ll catch something. Stranded people always do.”

  Conner rolled his eyes. “With what? I don’t see any hooks or rods.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll manage.”

  “Whatever, Estelle.”

  Conversation faded as we turned our attention to the final piece of fuselage. The crash had dented it. The indent would hold a few litres ...when the rain hit.

  My mouth tried to water at the thought of quenching my unquenchable thirst. But saliva was non-existent. The thought of drinking tree-created water when we returned to the beach was the only thing keeping me going for the past two hours.

  The first thing Conner and I had done was scrounge for any remaining edibles. We’d been stupid with how quickly we’d consumed our rations. And probably even more stupid by wasting the last dregs of energy on stripping a helicopter that wouldn’t replenish the nutrients it took to demolish.

  But there was another reason why I was eager to get as many pieces as possible. Yes, we needed the metal to somehow turn into water catchments (if and when a raincloud arrived) but if we arranged the fuselage into S.O.S on the beach, we might attract a plane.

  Not that any have been close since we arrived.

  “Yes!” With a final yank, the screw I’d been working on popped off. “Got it.”

  Conner squatted, picking up the fallen fixing, and adding it to my pile. I’d meticulously kept hold of the ones we’d undone, just in case they could be used for something.

  Like what, exactly? You plan on building a home on a deserted island?

  I ignored my snide thoughts.

  Last week, I would’ve scoffed at the mere mention of saving such things, but now...everything was an asset, even if it didn’t seem that way.

  Conner placed the metal on top of the others and disappeared back into the cabin. He returned with a coarse piece of rope, no doubt used as bracing for packages.

  I tucked the leaf-parcel I’d wrapped around my screws into my shorts pocket. I didn’t ask what he was doing, giving him free rein to think outside the box.

  With intense concentration, he secured the rope around the jagged edges of the metal and tugged.

  The entire pile slid toward him.

  He looked up. “What do you think? I don’t know about you, but the thought of carrying all this stuff to the beach? I don’t have the energy.”

  My shoulders rolled in relief.

  Thank God.

  I’d been dreading that part. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  His face whitened with concern. “I feel strange. My eyesight’s wonky, and I struggle to concentrate. Is that normal?”

  “It is when you’re severely dehydrated and hungry.”

  He looked off into the distance. “We need more food.”

  I nodded, swallowing at the mammoth task of such a thing.

  We need to be rescued.

  Stepping away from the wreckage, something cracked beneath my flip-flops. I looked down, expecting a snapped twig but something glinted beneath the dirt. “What on earth—”

  Conner watched me as I bent over and picked up the item.

  My heart instantly hammered. “They’re Galloway’s.”

  “He wears glasses?”

  Unobservant teenager.

  My fingers trembled as I smudged the broken eyewear with my thumb. “Yes. Not that he can wear these anymore.” The black frame that’d cradled his celestial blue eyes had been demolished. One lens had shattered but the other had survived intact (although extremely dirty).

  “So he’s blind without them?” Conner asked. “He seems to see okay.”

  “It’s not like that. He can see. He can do everything a normal person can; it’s just slightly out of focus.”

  Conner wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, that would suck.”

  “Yep.” I turned the glasses over, seeing if there was any way I could mend them. Unfortunately, with the bridge broken and one lens unusable, he’d have to use the glasses as a monocle.

  Or...they can be used for something else.

  Hope exploded inside.

  Hope linked entirely to survival. Hope that could attract attention. Hope that would make our evenings beneath the star-peppered sky more bearable.

  Why didn’t we think about it before?

  “Fire.”

  “What?” Conner frowned.

  “We don’t need a lighter. We have something that will work just as well.” I smiled at the burning sunshine.

  Conner didn’t speak as I marched past him, heading in the direction of the camp. “Come on. I want to get back. I want to try before it’s too late.”

  Silently, he followed, pulling his newly fashioned sleigh, leaving the pungent whiff of death behind us.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ...............................................

  G A L L O W A Y

  ......

  I COULDN’T DO it.

  Yes, I was in pain. Yes, I could barely move. Yes, I had no energy what-so-bloody-ever. But Estelle was working, trying, doing her best to keep us alive.

  She thought I’d obey and rest while she worked?

  Fat chance.

  She didn’t know me at all.

  There was no way in hell I would be a lazy slob while she killed herself doing things I should be doing.

  My thoughts smashed into one another like a nasty pile-up. I’d sorted the water issue. We had enough to stay breathing—not enough to quench our thirst—but enough.

  Shelter wasn’t something I could manage at the moment, no matter how much I hated admitting that.

  So, that left hunting.

  I
couldn’t swim, so I couldn’t fish. I didn’t have a net or any way of trawling the shallows for smaller sea life. I didn’t have a spear because Estelle had run off with the only knife and I couldn’t make a sharp point without one.

  My options were limited.

  But I couldn’t sit there another damn minute.

  If I can’t hunt. I’ll forage. There must be something to eat on this bloody island.

  Marching (okay, hopping with my crutch) to my messenger bag, I grabbed the bottom and upended it. A no-longer-working iPod fell out, along with my sketchpad with business logos that I’d been working on, earplugs from working in the lumberyard, my passport, and a packet of chewing gum.

  If by the luck of some deity I did find something to eat, I needed somewhere to store it. I wouldn’t waste my time finding something and having no way to cart it back. Because as ravenous as I was, it wasn’t just me I had to feed. There were four mouths, and two of those were entirely reliant on Estelle and me.

  Pippa looked up as everything I owned scattered on the beach. “What are you doing?”

  Slinging the satchel over my shoulder, I repositioned my crutch and began the arduous, agonising journey from soft sand to water’s edge. “Finding some food. Want to come?”

  “But Conner told me to stay.”

  I held my hand out, smiling with invitation. “You’ll be with me. I’ll look after you.”

  Her gaze flickered from me to the trees.

  Any sign of her fever or infection had disappeared—thankfully, her young genes had been strong enough to fight.

  “He’ll be a few hours. You don’t want to wait that long, do you? You’ll get bored.”

  She kicked the sand with her bare toes. “I guess not.”

  “Imagine how excited Conner will be if he comes back and we’ve found dinner. Would you like that?”

  Her face brightened. “Dinner? Can I have chicken strips and mashed potatoes?”

  My heart sank. If I did manage to find food, the chances of it appealing to the kid’s taste buds were zero. Not to mention, we’d have to eat it raw.

  Unless I can perform the ‘rub two sticks together and create fire’ trick.

  “I don’t think we’ll find that, but it will be food and give you energy.” I smiled. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Pippa didn’t argue, skipping lightly on her feet to join me. She didn’t try to hold my hand, which I was grateful for, as I needed both to manhandle my crutch and not face-plant. I couldn’t put any weight on my broken ankle and the action of leaning, hopping, leaning, hopping took far more energy than a simple stroll.