Orona (Book 1)

Chapter 3 - A Visitor

Had it already been a few hours? It felt like I had just fallen asleep. Another nudge pushed on my shoulder, this one more impatient than the last.

"It's your turn to keep watch," said an exhausted whisper.

I opened my eyes and could barely make out Cubby's face.

"Make sure you keep the fires burning until morning. I made a torch. You'll need it to scare some of the more aggressive animals.

'Aggressive animals.' I was not excited to wake up in the middle of the night to find out what that meant.

At least I had Drew to help me. We stayed busy, continually chasing off these little white fox-like animals with our torches. They had several rows of long snaggled teeth that they loved to show me as they ran away from my torch. They'd make a sound like a hissing cat, but deeper as they fled into the safeness of the dark forest. Wild red eyes surrounded us now, choking us with each passing hour. As the night went on, they became more daring, trying to nip and tear at the dead. The forest was alive, and it felt as if every animal within miles knew of our peril and was out to score an easy meal.

Finally, it started to get light. The animals scattered like cockroaches, fleeing the sunlight as it exposed their hiding spots. I don't think I had ever been so excited to see the dawn. "Cubby, Jack, get up guys. We need to start moving everyone down by the lake. We won't last here much longer. The animals are getting more aggressive, and we need to get everyone away from all these dead bodies before tomorrow night," I said, walking over to where they were sleeping.

"Yeah, we can't hold all these animals off much longer," explained Drew, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. "And once they finish eating our dead, they might turn on the wounded. We're lucky no big game has shown up yet."

"Let's load everything we can use, and the crippled passengers, on these pieces of the plane," said Cubby in a yawn. "We can use it to drag them down to the water." He started to load up one of the large metal plates that had come off the plane in the wreck.

"We've got to get away from all these dead bodies," said Larry, walking over from where he'd been sleeping. I didn't sleep much last night. Animals were everywhere. I had to kick one of them as it started to bite at my shoe. Besides, we're sitting here like bait for that ape." He grimaced, putting his hand over his nose.

"Yeah, that's what we're doing. You can probably smell it from—"

"Hey!" hissed a woman that was hugging a child. "Watch what you say around people." The child began to cry softly into the woman's shoulder.

"What are you—" Then I stopped. I remembered that while all my brothers were accounted for, others had lost loved ones, some their entire families. I lowered my voice and turned to Cubby. "Load everything up, and get the others to help too."

We spent all that day loading up everything we could carry and dragging it down the steep mountainside. We searched through the wreckage and collected every piece of luggage and anything else we might use. Once we reached the lake, Jack started coming up with a plan.

"We need to open up all the luggage and make an inventory of what we have," he said. "Do we have any pen and paper? We also need to talk to every survivor and figure out who has skills that might be useful here. We need to clean and dress all open wounds and cut off the smell of blood, and then keep all food outside our camp and up in the trees."

Unlike me, Jack had a knack for leadership and was comfortable addressing a large group of people. He was the boy-genius type that seemed to know everything. He'd started a very successful tech company in his early twenties. He's used to leading thousands of employees and is skilled at seeing the big picture. Plus, he's our oldest brother, and we'd all gone to him for advice for most of our lives.