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.”