Rogue Element

Central Sulawesi, 0600 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

Joe Light swatted ineffectually at the swarm of mosquitoes. Feeling nauseous and utterly helpless, he peered down on the crash site from his new vantage point on an adjacent hill. The plane was far enough away for the detail to be lost but the overall picture was still terrible. He put the compact Bausch & Lomb binoculars he’d found still tangled in their duty-free wrapping to his eyes and centred the old couple in the lenses. He waved exaggeratedly at the old bloke. The man and his wife were now propped under the shelter he’d built for them, scavenged from bits of aircraft aluminium.

Their names were Jim and Margaret. Jim had been in shock and it had taken a while to get his name out of him. Margaret was unconscious when he’d left, probably from the agony of her broken leg.

Joe had gone searching amongst the debris for other survivors, and for painkillers for Margaret. He hadn’t found either. At first he’d been uncomfortable sifting through other people’s luggage but the pangs quickly passed. The passengers had no further use for their things. That change in his outlook coincided with the find of the binoculars.

Joe took a deep breath, filling his lungs. The air here was hot and moist and mercifully clear of the smell of jet fuel and roasted flesh. The equatorial sun and high humidity were already going to work on the hundreds of broken bodies lying around. Down at the crash site, a sickly-sweet smell had begun to rise from the ground. The first signs of decay.

Joe looked up at the sky. Unbroken grey cloud sat overhead like dirty cotton wool. Where was help? Why wasn’t this place swarming with rescue operations? He then realised he had no idea where ‘this place’ was. He knew that it certainly wasn’t Australia — the captain had told them when the last of the Australian coastline slipped by beneath the plane. That had been quite a few hours before the jumbo fell out of the sky. Was he in Malaysia, or Indonesia? Burma, Thailand? Geography was never his strong suit.

The aircraft’s landing had stripped the area of trees. He saw that their runway was actually a depression surrounded by hillocks and the plane was lucky not to have hit one. Lucky? Only three passengers had survived the crash out of… he didn’t know how many. That was hardly lucky.

The terrain they had landed in was relatively low lying. He surveyed the horizon. Wherever they were, it was remote. He could see no smoke from fires, save from the bits of aircraft still smouldering. No signs of population or civilisation. If there were people in the vicinity they were doing a bloody good job of making themselves scarce.

He turned around, keeping the binoculars to his eyes. Off in the distance was the perfect conical base of a gigantic mountain that towered above the rest, its summit disappearing into haze and cloud. He let the rucksack slip from his shoulder and the bottles of water spilled out onto the ground. He’d found the bottles, along with some food in packaged trays, after rummaging through a section of the galley searching for other survivors. The galley that had been ripped from the fuselage and thrown 400 metres up a ravine.

He’d also found a piece of wing flap attached to an aluminium rib. The implement looked like an axe. He swung it through the air. Felt like one, too. Joe used it to pick through the debris. It was also pretty effective at hacking through the vegetation on the hillock. He wanted to clear away a section of it and set up a campsite for himself and the two old people, well away from the bodies and the aeroplane, although God only knew how they were going to lug Margaret up here with her broken leg.

The hillock wasn’t far from the crash site — about six hundred metres — but it was a difficult trek, much of it through tall, thick razor grass that did its best to flay the skin from his bones. He looked at the deep scratches crosshatching the flesh on his forearms. A collection of bugs fought with flies and mosquitoes to get at his blood. Joe shuddered. At least I’m alive, he reminded himself again, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot of that going on around here at the moment.

It was Joe’s second trip to the hillock. It had taken a good half hour to reach it the first time, threading through the dense, clawing bush. It was easy to get lost in the gloom. The jungle was virtually impenetrable. A thick mat of wet leaves, fronds, grasses and vines fought with trees and saplings for any light blinking through the canopy overhead. It wasn’t made for human passage, especially a human more at home in the cafés of Sydney’s Paddington.

The best way through the jungle was on all fours, close to the ground, where there wasn’t enough light for the vegetation to grow too thickly, or in the tops of the trees. Indeed, he thought he heard the chatter of monkeys overhead, but the sound stopped before he could get a fix on the origin. He came across a trail through the thick vegetation, more like a tunnel, and he tried using that for a while, but it led diagonally away from his intended destination.

It had quickly become obvious to Joe, and Jim, that they had to move away from all the death. Every section of the aircraft big enough to provide shelter was either too sooty, too oily, or covered in gore. Within a day, most of the dead would begin to bloat and the smell of decomposing flesh, already thick in the air, would be unbearable. The most obvious section of the aircraft for them to shelter in would have been the nose and forward fuselage, but it was like an abattoir in there and his mind recoiled with horror at the memory of it. He had checked out where his seat, 5A, had been. It was missing, of course, plucked out from the seats in front and behind, some of which still contained the bloody, torn remains of their occupants. He found his computer, but he had no use for it and so left it behind.

Within hours of the crash the jungle had started reclaiming the ground it had lost to the 250 tonne chunk of aluminium that had ploughed through it. Decomposition was good for the jungle. That was how it sustained itself, perpetuating its existence; plants and animals dying and rotting back into the soil to provide nutrients for future flora and fauna: a continuous cycle of life and death. The crash had provided this cycle with an enormous shot of blood and bone, fertiliser, and the jungle was hungry to make use of it. This was no place for the living. A feeding frenzy was in progress. Nature would surely kill them and add their flesh to the feast if they hung around. They had to leave, and quickly, despite the fact that there was also a logic to staying put: if rescue came, where else would it go but to the scene of the crash?

Joe parted the foliage in front of his face and the devastation of the crash below was plain to see. He scanned it with the binoculars again and steeled himself not to become nauseated by what he saw. Joe then lifted them to the haze beyond. A city could be out there for all he knew, but if there was, he couldn’t see it. Joe felt alone, forgotten, marooned. What the hell to do next? Where to go? Where the fuck is everyone?

The jungle was comparatively sparse on top of the hillock. He’d found a couple of blankets and intended to use them as an awning strung between the saplings. There was plenty of cloud shielding them from the full strength of the sun, but he knew that strong equatorial ultraviolet rays were bouncing around under them. The blankets would provide more complete protection. Joe’s skin was pale and he’d never been a beach-goer, preferring to spend his time bathed in the radiation from a computer screen, or practising his left/right combinations in the gym.

Using the makeshift axe, Joe dug a pit in the earth to keep the bottles of water cool. There were eleven 250 ml bottles. Nearly three litres. Joe tried to remember how much a person needed to drink each day to prevent dehydration. Was it one litre or two? Did your body weight make a difference? Joe had no real idea except that it was probably bound to be more than a cup when it was so bloody hot. He wondered if Jim would know.

Food was important too. He’d had the presence of mind to salvage a couple of trays while sifting through the wreckage. He’d forced himself to do it though the thought of eating made him feel sick.

While moving through the jungle, he’d come across a creek that separated the aircraft remains from the campsite. He was about to drink from it, scooping up a handful of water, when he smelled kerosene. He decided to try finding more bottled water amongst the wreckage instead.

Joe considered some of the other things he would need to make the new site a bit more ‘liveable’. Then it occurred to him that help might be a simple phone call away, so a mobile phone would be a lifesaver, his, if they had come down in a service area. He imagined making the call. ‘Hello, yes, can you please put me through to the people who handle crashed 747s…’ It was then that something in Joe gave way. Hot tears filled his eyes and he slumped to the ground.

Joe lay on his back and looked up through the leaves at the sky. He couldn’t recognise the sound at first. And then the helicopters flew right over the top of him. After a moment’s shock, he jumped up, waving and yelling.

The Super Pumas flew in a loose formation. They skimmed the hillock Joe was setting up camp on and then swooped low across the crash scene, the rotor downwash creating eddies of loose rubbish. They made several passes over the depression, probably scouting the best place to land, or perhaps looking for survivors from a higher vantage point. He continued to jump and throw his arms about in an attempt to catch their attention, but they were focused on the carnage below rather than the hills above.

Joe followed them with his binoculars, hands shaking. The giant choppers settled on the ground, rocking on their wheels. Doors slid open and soldiers in full camouflage gear jumped out. Joe wondered vaguely why they were carrying weapons, then dismissed the thought. They’re soldiers, soldiers carry guns. He could hardly contain his excitement and his sense of relief. Rescue had arrived.

The soldiers fanned out into the wreckage, obviously looking for survivors. Joe lowered his binoculars and leaped about shouting desperately in the hope that someone might happen to glance up in his direction. No one did.

One of the soldiers discovered Jim and Margaret. Through his binoculars, Joe could see them talking. There were lots of animated arm movements. Jim was obviously excited at the arrival of the soldiers. He pointed to Joe’s hillock. That’s right, Jim, tell them there’s one more of us. ‘Up here! Here!’ Joe waved as the soldier looked in his direction. He ran backwards and forwards across the hill, vaguely confused about what he should do next, stopping every time he lost the image of the rescue party in the binoculars to refocus it.

The soldier turned to face Jim and Margaret and fired his weapon into them. One long and lazy automatic burst. Joe didn’t hear the weapon discharge but the recoil was unmistakable. Jim slid slowly sideways. Margaret convulsed briefly. The soldier changed magazines then pointed his rifle in Joe’s direction. He took in the scene open-mouthed, unable to accept it as reality. What the hell was going on? Puffs of smoke chugged soundlessly from the small black hole sighted directly at him. Two bullets passed close enough for him to feel their pressure wave against his skin, leaving a pair of neat holes in a fleshy green frond beside his neck. Joe dropped the binoculars then froze, every muscle locked in a spasm of fear.

The helos rose from the ground on their swirling columns of rubbish and flew away, leaving behind the soldiers and their guns.