To Survive
Chapter One
She woke up not because she wanted to, but because she sensed that something was horribly wrong. She wanted to surrender to sleep but it lured her awake, into consciousness. All too soon, her body was being shaken and her leg jostled. She shouted out in pain and big hands were on her face, smoothing back her hair and over her cheeks. They wanted her to wake.
"Arabella," they called and she felt something tickling her nose, hovering over her mouth, "she's not breathing".
"No" he said, "It looks like she's breathing to me. Her chest is moving up and down-"
"Quit staring at her chest!" Brice shouted.
Cole sighed, loudly, and looked down at the eight year old. Overprotective brothers were getting old. Cole ran a hand down his face only to stingingly smear blood from his forehead, where it was dripping past the small scar that ran through his left eyebrow. This was unbelievable, he ground his teeth angrily.
"Oy! Is anyone in there?"
Cole's eyes shot towards the sound of the voice, grateful and somewhat confused, "yea, we're in here".
He took a look outside and saw nothing but green, he wasn't that much of an idiot to wander around in the dark. He hurried to the end of the plane where the durable metal had been ripped, the edges now jagged and a threatening kind of sharp. A circle of light hit his face and he held up a hand, grunting in annoyance. All he wanted was to hit the sack, whether it be on the plane floor or on a pile of leaves. Yet, he was human and his gut told him that things would go wrong if he left a rude eight year old boy with his unconscious sister.
"Kenton, is anyone else alive?" two people with heads topped with blonde hair climbed onto the plane.
"There's three of us," Cole began as he squinted at the light, "the girl's unconscious- will you get that damn light off out of my face?"
"Sorry," the light immediately went to the ceiling and reflected off the plane's walls so that it dimly lit up part the empty plane.
Cole couldn't help his brain's first thoughts. Pretty boy. It wasn't his fault that those two words just about summed up the young man standing with the flashlight. It definitely wasn't the young man's fault that fine blonde hair topped his head or blue lined his irises, or that he had a nicely defined jaw and a healthy appearance. Or that his two piece Armani suit was now shredded into four. No, that had been the plane's fault. Kenton's sigh was one of relief.
"I thought we were the only ones," he confessed.
"This-," Cole's hands balled into fists angrily, "this is un-fucking-believable!," he yelled.
Brice looked up with a smirk, "look, its Richie Rich," he snorted.
Cole snickered, "not bad kid". He watched, amusedly, as Kenton's jaw tightened.
"Kenton's interested in pre-med," the girl behind him spoke up boldly, "don't badmouth the guy who can fix your sister, little boy".
At the girl's statement, Brice paled noticeable and rushed back to his sister. The boy stared at her denim clad leg, torn in between gently pulling it up to see the wound and touching the blood soaked material. The worse injury he'd ever seen was when Ben Kaleson fell from his skateboard and broke his arm. Brice had never seen a real cracked human bone protruding out of anyone's skin until then. He would never want to see said injury on Bella.
"It's not too bad," Kenton bent down and reached for her leg when Brice shoved his arm, "I'm not going to hurt her. I'm just going to look, alright?"
Brice was hesitant but he nodded after a few seconds and sat back on his heels, watching. Cole rested against an upside down cushioned chair, and pictured Arabella when she walked past the concession stand in the airport. She didn't have any parents with her and the flight attendant had called them out as minors. It seemed as if there were several unaccompanied minors on his flight, himself included.
They were too old to be put on a flight attendant's leash but not too young to be dropped off at an airport by adults who claim to be their parents. Cole's fingers brushed against the pack of cigarettes deep in his pocket. He had felt like one of his parents' experiments and one day, decided to do just that. Experiment. Cole wondered how far he could push them to the limit. Let them try and figure out the hypothesis of Colton Farrow. Let them analyze their data and gather their evidence because honestly, Cold didn't give a damn.
He would screw with their experiments until the readings went off the charts. Surviving as a passenger in a plane that crashed was definitely one way to go.
"She's bleeding a lot," Brice whispered and Cole looked at the girl.
"Come here, kid," Cole pulled a suitcase out of the compartments that used to be over their heads. He went through it before finding a tee shirt and a black tie decorated with horizontal silver stripes. "Help me go through the other bags, find more ties like this one here. See?"
"Okay," Brice rushed off, frequently stumbling over masks and random debris.
That was when the odd emptiness off the plane truly became evident, becoming a reality to the others. Cole walked past Kenton and Valerie, grabbing his own carry-on duffel and extracting a pocket knife. Kenton was looking at the empty chairs, his blue eyes swirling between the emotions of disbelief. The eight year old boy threw out random individual bags, rapidly searching for more suit ties.
"This plane was full of people," Kenton stuttered as his sister sat on the ground of the upside down plane, "it's where is the plane's empty!"
"No shit," Cole muttered while using the knife to cut the denim from around her leg.
"Where are the bodies," Kenton asked pushing aside debris to get to the captain's compartment, "there were hundreds of people in this plane!"
"No idea," he, himself, was trying to stay calm.
"And where the hell are we?" he demanded.
"I don't know Barbie," Cole answered dryly, "why don't you use the GPS system on your Malibu convertible?"
The look Kenton gave him was murderous. Brice pushed past him to hand Cole a handful of ties, a mixture of different colors. Cole muttered his thanks and used one to tie just above her wound, hopefully suppressing the blood flow. With a look at the blonde, he sent the small boy to fetch a first aid kit.
Cole waited until Brice was near the end of the plane before turning to Kenton, "shine the flashlight and get ready with this shirt. I'm going to pull this. . . whatever the hell it is, out of her leg and you press down with the shirt to stop the blood Alright?"
Kenton nodded shakily before kneeling down over her and across from Cole. He waited, ready to pounce with the shirt, and found that the dark haired boy was staring at him.
"What are you waiting for?" Kenton demanded.
"When she wakes up from the pain and hits you across the face, you're not going to act like a wuss right?" Cole asked, "I need to tie the shirt for a makeshift band aid and if you're out cold, it sort of defeats the purpose of you helping me-"'
"Shut up and do it," Kenton hissed.
"Relax dude, I was just wondering that's all-"
"Pull the damn thing out!"
Cole's fingers took a firm hold on two inch wide metal embedded in her skin and pulled. Arabella's world came to her in a sharp painful snap. Her vision blurred just as Kenton pressed the folded tee shirt to her leg and Colt knotted the tie around both. Her yell was only heard by those in the plane- and the trees, and the creatures, and the sand, and the waves crashing against rocks- because there was no one else.
summer f a d e s to fall
Just go in there and remember
you're f a n t a s t i c .
