Strange Island Fellows

The fiery wreckage of the plane crash sizzles in the water. Various sections of the plane float along the top of the watery surface, strewn about of a wide area, after coming apart in the middle of flight. Khalid Saqqaf comes up from underwater, yellow life preserver primed, gasping for air. He makes his way over to a floating piece of debris and tries to get his breathing under control. One breath in, one breath out. He repeats this process for about twenty seconds before he’s able to try and grasp his current predicament.

“I was trying to catch a plane home to see my brother. And then-” he surveys his surroundings again before blowing out an exaggerated sigh and paddling his current piece of debris toward a bigger one.

After a minute of paddling, Khalid lets go of the small debris piece and tries gripping onto the bigger one. The natural slickness of the airplane exterior combined with being wet makes it more of a challenge, but he is eventually able to launch himself on top. The debris wiggles a little bit but after settling along the ocean current, it seems to be holding Khalid’s weight just fine. Khalid rests his hand son his face and groans loudly into them.

“I mean. There’s been armed conflict in the region. Maybe a stray missile or something hit the plane? Figured it was safe since they let all of us come here.”

Khalid sat up to look around him. He could occasionally see the bodies of the other passengers spread about the crash area. He assumed they were bodies at least, given they were often face down or at least not moving. Khalid scanned the area around again. No land in sight as far as he could tell.

“Best thing to do is stay put then. No sense in wearing myself out before I die.”

Khalid removes the life preserver to get his shirt off to throw it over his face. He then makes sure to refasten the life preserve in case he slips off the piece of debris he’s on. After several minutes, he was able to convince himself he was taking an afternoon nap in the sun and nodded off

______________________________________________________________________________

Khalid rolls off the piece of debris as is quickly met with a salty splash of water as well a shallow floor of wet sand. This stimulus wakes the young man up immediately, and he flops around unceremoniously before lifting at least his face above the water. His hands dig into the wet sand as he looks down then ahead to the shoreline of a beach. Khalid goes to stand up, trips a little bit as his feet dig into the wet sand, but gains his composure and flops himself on the dry, sandy shore.

The Hot sand cooks against Khalid’s skin, but he didn’t mind because it was good enough to have dry land underneath him. He flops over onto his back and looks up toward the sky with closed eyes. The bright sunset rays bathe him in a reddish glow

“If I was able to just drift here in about a few hours, then the island can’t be too far away. Probably within parameters for a rescue team to look here.”

Khalid’s eyes open up. “IF they send a rescue team. Anyone sees that crash, they’d probably assume who ever was in it is dead. They might just get the black box and assume everyone died.”

He sits up.

“Well. I guess I should start thinking about shelter. The sun’s nearly gone and all.”

Just as quickly as that thought arrived, the sunlight all but vanished, replaced by the light glimmer of night. Khalid wasn’t able to fashion any kind of impressive shelter, but thankfully it didn’t rain, so he could improve upon it tomorrow. The night came and went, Khalid’s sleep is what can be expected from a survivor of a major event on night one: bad. The memory of the crash kept him freshly awake, thanks to the adrenaline and horror of it all. Then, right as he was almost asleep after he started winding down, he heard some shambling in the nearby trees. He didn’t want to get whatever that was interested in him, so he had to quiet his breathing and stay very alert for the rest of the night. Thanks to all of this, Khalid didn’t sleep much if at all and when the sun came back to visit he was fully miserable with a full day’s work ahead of him.

“First things first, I need to make a new cammmmm-”

Khalid was attempting to get his thoughts in line when he noticed, not too far from him, a bloated corpse wanders out from the ocean water. It didn’t drift onto the shore, no, it WALKED onto the shoreline. Rotted, waterlogged skin was falling off it in places all across its body, some place only visible thanks to the shredded holes in its clothes. Its eyes looked dead and unnaturally clouded. One of its arms was missing up to the elbow, and the other one was holding something orange in its hands.

Khalid approached the strange, dead-looking creature, carefully.

“Am I seeing things? Has the heat already gotten to my head?”

The creature craned its neck towards Khalid. Its neck bent unnaturally as it did so. Khalid flinched. The creature, having noticed him, started progressing toward Khalid with an unnatural, shambling, gait. Khalid, in response, backed up as it approached. This went on for ten minutes.

“This has to be a delusion. I can’t be seeing this. I can’t be seeing an actual zombie chasing me on a deserted tropical island.” Khalid reasoned.

“I have to see the delusion through. I can’t let it haunt me.”

Khalid rationalized a solution to was seems like an insane occurrence. He stood still as a statue as the undead creature approached closer and closer. Before longing, the mixed aroma of saltwater and rotting meat hit Khalid’s nose. A unique, nauseating scent that caused him to immediately start dry heaving.

“This is a bad time to develop parosmia.” Khalid continued to rationalize as the creature approached ever forward.

Just a few body lengths away, Khalid had to force himself not to start retching as the stink intensified and took his sense hostage.

The zombie eventually let go of the orange thing in its hand and began reaching toward Khalid.

The zombie lunges for Khalid and in a stint of fight or flight, Khalid moves backward, reacting o quickly and causing himself to fall over on his butt. The zombie fell forward on its stomach before pulling itself up. The salt water causing the loose bit of skin to stick to the sand and rip away even more, creating fresh, dead-meat small to permeate the immediate surroundings. The zombie on its knees makes another lunge at Khalid, who attempted to back away as quickly as he could on his hands and butt, eyes shut tightly.

A loud crack.

SPLAT.

Khalid opens his eyes to see the head and torso of the undead creature has been crushed by the trunk of a fallen palm tree. Khalid stood up. Looking down at his hands, he had weird, thick black liquid on them. Khalid took another look at the creature. Its bloated, rotted skin stank even worse now that it was so close. Khalid dry-heaved a little more before stumbling his way up and towards the ocean. There he washed himself of the creature's thick, black blood.

Once he felt sufficiently clean, Khalid walked in a wide circle around the creature toward the thing it was carrying before it decided to lunge at him. Upon closer inspection, the orange thing reads “flight data recorder do not open”.

“Flight data recorder? Is that like a black box?”

Khalid wasn’t sure, but if it was recording flight data and the flight he was on crashed. Someone probably wanted it, and that means someone could probably track it. He picked up the device. It was hefty, but not as much as he’d thought, considering it supposed to survive plane crashes. With the data recorder in hand, Khalid made progress back to his original base camp. It didn’t take long for him to notice a group of official looking individuals on the shore line where he landed on the debris just yesterday.

“Heyyyyy!” he called out, waving his available hand to the officials.

The officials turned to see him, and more importantly the device, and began rushing over. Khalid felt at ease up until a couple of them drew out handguns from their attire and pointed the firearms his way.

“Sir, how did you get that flight data recorder?”

Khalid smiled. Lying time, for sure.

“Oh, well, I was a survivor of the plane this came from. I was struggling to get my life vest inflated and was sinking for a while and happened to spot this thing sinking down next to me. I knew exactly that it was, so I took the time to snatch it before finishing my life vest.”

He laughs for good measure. “Nearly drowned!”

The two officials look at each other before nodding and putting their guns away.

“That was very innovative, sir. I wouldn’t make a habit of doing that. Could land you in some serious heat.”

Khalid smiles, perfectly disguising the insane way all this occurred. “If I survive another plane crash like this, I’m going to start gambling.”

The officials laugh. Genuinely.

“Win anything, remember us then, huh?”

“You got it!”

“Mind if we take it now?”

Khalid smiles again. “Only if you take me off this island.”

Khalid hands off the data recorder and is then escorted by the two officials to the nearby helicopter. The pilot quickly puts out a cigarette they were smoking before hopping back in the pilot’s seat. The officials secure the data recorder in a special compartment under lock and key, and the helicopter begins taking off. In moments, they’re airborne and Khalid stares solemnly over where he’d gotten saved by pure happenstance.

There is no fallen tree.

There is no human-shaped body.

Just miles and miles of empty shoreline stretched out before Khalid's eyes.

A shiver goes up his spine.