Rogue Element

Central Sulawesi, 0230 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

Suryei and Joe knew they would find a stream or a creek, flowing water at least, in the bottom of the steep valley. They edged their way down to it, weak from lack of food. Their desire for a drink was powerful, a catalyst for mistakes. Joe stretched out for a crack in the rock face before he had secured his foothold. He reached for thin air and fell the last twenty metres upside down, clawing the air like a beetle on its back.

Suryei saw Joe fall and the emotions cascaded in on her; anger at his lack of care, desperation that she might lose him, fear for his life, and then anxiety about being left on her own. The feelings rushed around her system like a series of electric shocks, each fighting for ascendancy. She was afraid to look around the black basalt crag that obscured her view of the final moments of his fall. She did not want to see Joe’s broken body lying at the base of the cliff, not after what they’d both been through and survived. She found herself crying as she made her way across and down to the spot where she thought Joe would be lying.

The impact with mother earth felt like hitting concrete and the force of it crushed the air from his lungs. And then the concrete dissolved and became water. Deep water. He’d had a moment to think he was dead before he became aware that he wasn’t. Joe had landed in a pool. Far below the surface, the water was cool, even cold. Joe was aware of the light overhead as he floated towards it. The coolness became warmth, and then heat, a wafer biscuit of cold on cool, cool on warm and warm on hot. Joe burst to the surface with a searing pain in his lungs. He needed to breathe.

As Suryei came around the edge of the rock, a wide, black pool of water that had been hidden from her view opened out before her. The surface steamed like a large cauldron. Joe lay in the middle of it, floating face down. Suryei carefully negotiated the sharp rocks at the edge of the pool, then jumped into the black water.

She didn’t call out, didn’t say anything. She just swam towards Joe, and when she reached him and found him unhurt, she punched him, softly at first and then harder and harder. Finally, exhausted, she rested, sobbing against his chest, arms around his shoulders. Dimly, she felt him growing against her belly in the warm water. She wasn’t aware of it at first and then the feel of his penis against her skin shocked her. The sudden realisation that she had that effect on Joe aroused her. Before she knew what she was doing, Suryei reached down and freed him from his pants. His body was lean and terribly scratched, etched by their passage through the unwilling environment. She squeezed him to her, treading water.

Joe was stunned by Suryei’s display of emotion. She’d been so in control. He felt her embrace, her warmth, and his hormones took control, flowing through his body. Her closeness to him had a powerful effect, no matter how much he tried to suppress it. He was aware of her hands searching hungrily. He slid his hand inside the remains of her shirt and felt the soft skin of her breasts, her nipples hardening under his fingertips. Suryei reached down and unzipped her fly. She bucked in the water until her pants slid from her legs, removed by the water’s gentle caress. His own pants seemed somehow to have dissolved away.

They were suddenly naked together. Suryei needed this. Perhaps it was a reaction to the constant danger. She had never wanted a man inside her so badly. His heat entered her. For the first time in her life the intensity and the imminence of sex drugged her, overcoming her inhibitions. She wrapped her legs around his torso and pulled him deep inside her. They kissed, sucking each other’s lips, biting, hungry.

They moved together in the pool, probing, accepting, lifting each other to orgasm. There was desperation in their rhythm, an intensity to the urgency between them. And when they were spent, they stayed together, embracing, sinking slowly beneath the warm water, into the cool layers below.

‘Listen, Joe, don’t flatter yourself, okay?’ Suryei said as she slipped on her wet cargo pants. Was that a smirk she’d caught on his lips? Suryei had already done a good job of justifying their fucking — that’s what it was, fucking — in her mind. Nine months after life-threatening earthquakes and floods, she reminded herself, a spurt in the local birth rate is not unusual. She’d read about incidents where total strangers had coupled during such events. Even some plants flowered as they withered and died, in the hope of attracting bees and other insects, in one last death-defying attempt to pass on their genetic material. It was species survival, the force of nature. Feelings had nothing to do with it.

‘What we did was just some primal thing. You could have been any “Joe”, Joe.’ Joe’s face clouded and the realisation that she’d hurt him tightened her stomach.

‘Look, Joe,’ she said, wringing the excess water from her hair. ‘We’ve done a good job of staying alive here, but we could be dead in a few minutes for all we know. The only reason we’ve made it this far is because we’ve kept ourselves single-mindedly focused on surviving. If we turn this into a sequel to Blue Lagoon or something, we won’t get out.’

Joe examined her for a moment.

‘What?’ she asked, feeling uncomfortable.

There was nothing much Joe could say. Their situation looked pretty grim and their chances of getting out alive were slender and shrinking with every passing hour. This was hardly the setting for a budding romance. So he said nothing and just put his arm around her. ‘Come on,’ he said after a minute of silence.

Joe helped her across the rocks as they began the climb out. For the first time, it was help she accepted readily. He looked up and took in their surroundings. The massive volcano towered skywards, the upper reaches of its cone disappearing in cloud. A sheer escarpment rose vertically between them and the base of the volcano. The rock pool he’d fallen into lay at the bottom of a valley, carved by the lava flow from the brooding giant beyond. Small plumes of sulphurous steam puffed from fissures in the rock here and there and gave an unpleasant tang to the air.

It was a forbidding place, yet their relationship had changed fundamentally and the terrain no longer seemed to Joe quite so threatening.