Personal Log: Adrian Rodd

Lost... And now, the continuation.

These are the next few pages of my story. For those of you who have never watched Lost and may be wondering who's who, here are pictures of the main characters. To help you pick them out in the story, those marked with a green sign are those Sarah has met and talked to already by the end of this second part (Charlie, Claire, Hurley, Paulo and Sayid). Those marked with an orange cross are characters she's seen but not yet talked to; those marked in red are characters she's not seen or met at all yet; and those marked in mauve are characters it would not have been possible for her to meet yet, for various reasons.

Sarah herself is only seen very briefly onscreen in Lost. Here she is on the plane, in seat 24B, behind Jack (23C). In 24D is John Locke. Right in front of him (23D) is Rose, a recurring minor character. You can see Sarah again here and here, behind Jack, talking to the man seated next to her (in 24C). That man also survived, but has not yet been introduced into my story. He will appear at some point later.

(Naturally, Sarah is a character invented by me. I wanted a picture of her, so I picked a nameless character and took screencaps.)

Some of the lines spoken by the main characters (Sayid's speech, for instance, or Hurley talking to Boone and Shannon) are lines that were genuinely spoken on screen. In my story, Sarah happens to be close by enough to hear them.

Now, the story itself...

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The waves lapped gently against the beach, the air had cooled overnight, and there were a few whispering voices as survivors from yesterday’s crash slowly began to get up and about. Sarah had woken early, shortly after sunrise. She had slept on the torn blanket Charlie had found for her, but the sand had got into her hair and clothes all the same, as she wriggled during her sleep. Still, she had slept soundly, perhaps because the previous day’s events and the accompanying shock had been so exhausting that they had enabled her to overcome the strangeness and discomfort of her surroundings. The air had remained warm most of the night, and she wondered – as she sat up, trying to brush some of the sand out of her hair with her bare hands – whether that meant they had crossed north of the equator, from winter into summer. Still, around the equator the seasons did not vary much, did they? This could be anywhere.

The meal Hurley had given her last night still lay untouched (and cold) beside her, and she ate it hungrily, having had nothing to eat in far too long. After that, she picked up her sand-covered blanket, shook it, and made her way along the beach in search of somewhere to take a morning bath. She had no intention of waiting for their rescuersÂ’ arrival before she cleaned herself up. And a good long soak in the warm Pacific waters seemed like the most positive start she could think of to the day.

And then, she promised herself, I’ll find my bag. No doubt news of the crash had reached Sydney by now, and her father would be frantic with worry. She nodded to other people milling around as she crossed the beach. Paulo, looking sleepy and a little worried, gave her a brief smile, as though to apologise for his shell-shocked behaviour from the previous day… but he did not walk over to her. Nearby, his light-haired companion was still asleep. Claire, the pregnant Australian woman, sat reading and waved to her; Sarah waved back with a warm smile. A fairly young black man sat near a sleeping child, perhaps nine or ten years old – the only child Sarah had seen among them so far. A black woman in her early fifties sat some distance from the wreckage, looking out at the ocean; Sarah nodded at her, too, but the woman did not appear to see her.

Yawning lightly, Sarah moved away from the crash site, in search of privacy. As the makeshift camp disappeared from view behind her, its sounds faded away, and she was as alone as she had been upon first regaining consciousness. She put further distance between herself and the others, not wanting to risk being intruded upon, then took her top, trousers, shoes and socks off and ran into the sea, splashing the warm, salty water over heself. Sea water was not ideal to bathe in when you wanted to clean yourself, but it was better than nothing, and helped her feel a little more refreshed. She dried herself with the thin, still sand-encrusted blanket, dressed, and headed back towards the others. Now that she had found them, she intended to stay close until rescue came.

Much of her morning was spent looking through the bags and débris scattered over the beach, searching for her own. Beside the mobile phone in her hand luggage, her checked-in bag contained spare sets of clothes, and she would feel more comfortable if she could change into them. She had struck up a conversation with Claire, helping her sort through the contents of unclaimed baggage into piles of useful items, but had made no progress in locating her own belongings. Biting at her lower lip nervously, she began to consider borrowing someone else’s phone. Presumably, someone here had already called for help, but she realised she had no idea exactly what was going on, and whether any of her fellow survivors had started to get organised in any way. She remembered her brief conversation with Hurley last night. He had mentioned a man called Jack…

“Hey! Excuse me…” She walked over to the first person she caught passing by – an Arab man in his thirties, with long, frizzy, rather unkept dark hair. “’xcuse me, mate… I’m Sarah. I was looking for Jack. D’you know who Jack is?”

“Jack?” The man had a very calm voice, and and spoke perfect English, albeit with an audible accent. “Yes, I know who Jack is. He’s not here, though. Is there something I can help you with?” Almost as an afterthought, he held out his hand. “Sayid.”

“Oh… Hi, Sayid.” She shook it. “Well… This guy called Hurley yesterday seemed to think that Jack’s in charge of… well, getting everything sorted out around here. I was wondering… Has anyone been able to get through to rescuers? Has anyone called, dialed triple-O, been in touch with… I don’t know, whoever lives here?”

Sayid shook his head. “We’ve got no way of contacting the outside world. If anybody lived on this island, they would have come by now. So no, we have no news. If anybody saw our fire last night, they haven’t come yet.”

Sarah frowned. This was not what she had hoped to hear. “Well… Where’s Jack?” she asked.

“He left shortly after dawn.” Sayid turned partly and pointed towards the forest. “He went with Kate and Charlie. Jack thinks that if they can locate the front section of the plane, there may be some means of communication within the cockpit. Not to mention other survivors.”

“Wait… what?” Sarah stared at him, dismayed. “No… They’ve gone into the jungle for that? Despite what we heard last night?”

Sayid shrugged. “Right now, it’s our best hope of contacting the outside world. If they do find a communicator, I should be able to make it work. I was a communications specialist in the Iraqi army,” he explained matter-of-factly.

“No, you don’t understand.” Sarah sighed. “They’re wasting their time. I was in the front section… I was in it when we crashed. I don’t know whether I could find it again, but… I checked the cockpit. Well, I tried to. The door was locked. I couldn’t get it open.”

“You were in the front of the plane?” For the first time, a faint look of surprise crossed Sayid’s placid, almost emotionless face. “Were there any other survivors?”

She shook her head strongly, and shivered. “No… Just me,” she told him, almost in a whisper. “I was the only one…”

“Are you sure?” The Iraqi’s tone did not change – calm and precise.

“Of course I’m sure!” She had lowered her gaze as yesterday’s memories pressed in on her, but now lifted her eyes to glare at him, fiered up by a sudden burst of hurt and anger. “I crawled up that aisle checking every single body! Every single damn one – row after row! They were dead, all dead! There’s no-one alive back there!” Her voice dropped to a whisper once more, as her gaze lowered again. “No-one alive…”

“I’m sorry.” Though his intonation barely changed, Sayid sounded as if he meant it. “It must have been very unpleasant for you. You were lucky to find us.” He paused. “But why didn’t you tell us before Jack and the others set out?”

“Because I was asleep,” she retorted, with a renewed touch of irritation, “and because nobody asked me! I still have not the faintest idea what’s going on around here, and who’s doing what. I mean, perhaps we should all gather and get ourselves organised. There are… how many of us, anyway?”

“Forty-nine, I think.”

“Listen… Sayid. Wherever we are, this island has to belong to someone. I mean… I don’t know where we are, what our course was or how far we got before crashing, but this island has to be part of some Pacific country, like Fiji, or… Kiribati, or somewhere. I don’t know. Chances are it is inhabited.” She paused. “I don’t know whether mobile phones work here, but I’ve got one… somewhere. If I can just find my bag…” She trailed off. Sayid nodded, gave her a slight, encouraging smile, and placed his hand briefly on her shoulder.

“It’s possible.” She had no idea whether he believed it or not; his voice revealed very little, and his eyes even less. “Tell me what your bag looks like, and I’ll help you find it. Whatever happens, it seems we have a lot of time on our hands…”

* * *

Searching across the beach had not taken particularly long, and had yielded no results. Sayid had gone back to whatever it was he had been doing, while Sarah had introduced herself to several more of the survivors, asking to borrow their mobile phone. None of them had one. Disappointed, she had come across Claire again, and the two of them had continued sorting clothes from luggage nobody had claimed. Sarah reasoned that her own bag was probably still in the overhead compartment inside the wreckage. Sooner or later, she would have to go and retrieve it, but her memories of crawling up one wreck filled with dead bodies was so offputting that she had not yet mustered up the courage to do it a second time.

“So it would have been your first time in the States, too?” Sarah nodded at Claire’s question, folding a man’s white shirt methodically., and placing it atop a neat pile of other shirts. “I really had no idea what to expect,” Claire went on. “I wasn’t going there to sightsee, you know… I’ve seen pictures, but… LA…” She trailed off dreamily, as if she were somehow still aboard the plane and their original destination were still within reach.

“I guess you ran out of luck when the doctor allowed you to fly.” Sarah nodded at the other woman’s heavily swollen belly. “What’s his name? Or hers?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, I don’t know yet.” Claire placed her hand reflexively on her tummy. “I hadn’t really thought about it, until now… I wasn’t going to keep the baby. I was going to give it away…” Her voice trailed off once more, but this time she sounded thoughtful, almost sad. While Sarah struggled to think of an appropriate reply, she added: “I’ll have lots of time to think of a name now, though. I suppose this is fate’s way of punishing me for wanting to… give away my own child.”

SarahÂ’s lips twitched into a very brief smile. She folded a pair of orange shorts tidily, and said, with kind but firm conviction:
“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Oh, you should,” Claire chided her, picking up a light grey raincoat from a messy pile of clothes. “Look at us, after all. We crashed, but we’re still alive. The plane is in pieces, but – apart from one or two of us – none of us has even got a broken arm. How crazy is that? It’s fate, Sarah. Somehow. Has to be.”

“Maybe…” Sarah said, not in the least bit convinced. Her fellow Australian did have a point, though. What was the statistical likelihood of them all walking out of this horrendous mess unharmed? She had seen one man with a wounded leg, and apparently one person had been badly injured, but other than that there were forty-seven of them who had emerged from a horrific crash with not so much as a sprained ankle. It did not seem likely, and yet here they all were. Clearly alive.

We should probably be deadÂ… She shivered slightly, and picked an odd sock from the pile of clothes, then began looking for its counterpart.

“So…” Claire looked at her with friendly interest. “What was bringing you to LA?”

Just then, there was a loud, rumbling boom high overhead, and she lifted her face to the sky, just in time for it to be drenched with a sudden downpour of cold rain. She spluttered, spitting out water and wiping it from her eyes. What theÂ…? That had come out of nowhere. The sky had been a clear blue mere seconds earlier.

Claire pushed herself to her feet awkwardly under the torrential, pouring rain, and Sarah helped her up, draping the raincoat over the pregnant woman as best she could and hurrying with her towards the wreckage. Everywhere, people were scattering, running for cover. The clothes they had been sorting were going to get drenched, but that barely mattered for now. Every person on the beach seemed intent on only one thing: to get out of the sudden and inexplicable onslaught of the rain.

And this rainÂ’s much too cold for this climate, too! she thought, as she hastened towards the fuselage, guiding Claire with her. The sudden drop in temperature combined with her clothes being soaked within seconds was an unpleasant shock to her sytem. As they drew near the plane, Hurley was waving Boone and a young blond woman away, shouting over the sheer noise of the water crashing over the planeÂ’s torn metal frame.

“I’m telling you, you don’t want to go in there! Too many bodies!”

Boone and his friend – lover? sister? Sarah had not yet been introduced to them – turned away, and she pushed Claire gently towards the large Hispanic American.

“Go with Hurley!” she told her loudly over the noise. “I’m going into the plane!”

“What!” Claire turned to her, statled, and probably wondering whether she had heard correctly. Her face was partially blurred behind a steady sheet of water. “You heard what–”

“Yes, I know, but I need to go in there! Go with Hurley; find shelter! I’ll see you later!” With that, she turned away and ran into the gaping entrance which led into the middle section of the airliner. Inside, it was dark, as the skies above turned grey and the sun was blotted out by the rain. Sarah blinked, wiping the water from her face with the drenched sleeve of her t-shirt, and looked around. The narrow confines of the fuselage seemed to press down upon her in the half-light, and the dead further up front were little more than ghostly, seated shadows – while those closer by stood out in morbid detail despite the penumbra. She shivered in her wet clothes. Hers had been seat 24B, over half a dozen rows up from the point where the aircraft had been ripped in half. She moved forward cautiously, trying to spot her own empty seat, and not allow her gaze to stray to those who still remained seated, forever strapped into their chairs, a day after the crash…

Several of the overhead compartments had been blown open by the turbulence and the impact of the crash itself, their contents spilling out into the aisleway. She cast her eyes down briefly to each bag, just long enough to make sure that it was not her own. Despite herself, she took slow, hesitating steps. It took her a moment to realise why. It’s as if I’m in a graveyard, she thought. And one should not – her thoughts continued, flashing through her mind as she stared fixedly at her own seat, getting closer now – disturb the dead…

She reached her chair, and stopped. She looked down at her unstrapped seatbelt. The memories of her undoing it and getting up, oblivious at that time to what was about to happen, seemed incredibly distant now, almost a whole lifetime away. Had it really been less than twenty-four hours? The loose belt seemed to stare back up at her from a time and world now brutally wrenched away from herÂ… She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. DonÂ’t be silly. WeÂ’ll only be here a few hours longer. A day or two, at most. She looked up, towards the overhead compartment. It was open. A large brown bag was still wedged inside, but it was not her own. Her heart sank.

She looked round, checking the aisle, the spaces between and under all the nearby seats, and even the adjacent compartments, in case she had somehow made a mistake, forgetten where she had put it. But no. Her hand luggage was nowhere to be found. She sighed deeply, discouraged, and looked back towards the entrance. The rain was still pouring down. Through the gaping opening in the wreckage, she could just see the bald man she had glimpsed yesterday, the one with a thin gash over his left eye. He was sitting in the rain, his arms outstretched, his head tilted back to face the heavens, the water soaking his face. He was the only person still out in the open. She watched him for a few moments, too preoccupied by her own thoughts to wonder what on earth he was doing, then, after a momentÂ’s hesitation, sat down in her seat as she waited for the downpour to subside. Once again, she was sitting in the smashed fuselage of a downed airliner, a sole living being surrounded by the dead. She could feel their presence all round her, stifling, oppressive; she could see them from the corner of her eyeÂ… She closed her eyes, numbing her senses to all but the incredibly loud patter of the rain on the top of the fuselage over her head, and let out a low, half-choked whimper.

The regular beating of the rain, together with the darkness of her own inner eyelids, and the silence all around, conveyed an eerie sense of timelessness to the scene – of disconnexion from any outside reality. The inside of what had once been a plane was a now place suspended in time and space. And there was nothing for her here; nothing more for the living. She would leave as soon as the rain ceased.

The blackness before her eyes turned to a reddish glow as a sudden light shone through her closed eyelids. She opened them, and stared straight into a thin beam of light, flinching and turning her head away. Before she did so, she glimpsed a standing shadow somewhere down the other aisle, pointing what was presumably a torch at her.

“Is there someone there?”

It was Paulo’s voice. Exhaling quietly, she stood. The beam of light rose above her head, illuminating her faintly without blinding her, then went out. “Sarah, isn’t it?” She still could not place his accent. He sounded wary. “Are you looking for something?”

“What makes you think I’m looking for something?” she retorted, without thinking, and gestured towards the opening some distance away. “Have you seen the weather outside? This is shelter.” She paused, then admitted, “Yes, I’m looking for something.”

Paulo moved closer. He remained on the opposite side of the cabin from her, the middle column of seats seperating them. He smiled, a faint, wry smile. “Of course. Nobody shelters with the dead.” She still could not place his accent, but he spoke good English. “What is it you’re looking for?”

“My bag, of course. My hand luggage, to be precise. It should be in this compartment, but” – she gestured vaguely – “it isn’t. Perhaps it fell out into the sea, while the plane was coming down.”

Paulo nodded. “Perhaps. Was there anything important in it?”

She smiled quickly, sadly. “My mobile phone. I wanted to call my father, let him know I’m alive. Before the rescuers come… And call for help, too, in case no-one knows we’re here.”

“Yes, that would be good.” Paulo nodded, almost absently. “I was looking… for my bag too.” He looked directly at her, across the seats, the whites of his eyes distinctly visible in the darkened interior. “It has my nicotine tablets,” he explained, sounding a little embarassed.

For some reason, Sarah felt the weight of discomfort lift from her back and shoulders. Paulo’s words sounded oddly out of place in such a grim, dark setting, almost comically so, and helped to break the oppressive spell that seemed to rest upon this open graveyard. She smiled, freely, then carefully gave her own face a more sympathetic expression.”I’m sorry. I imagine withdrawal isn’t very pleasant.

“It’ll probably get worse,” he answered, matter-of-factly. He turned his head towards the gaping breach, and she followed his gaze. “The rain’s stopped.”

“So it has...” She trailed off.

“I don’t” – he looked at her again – “think we need to tell anyone we were looking around in here.”

“No,” Sarah agreed, shaking her head – and, again, not entirely sure why. “No, we don’t.” For some reason, the light-hearted moment had passed, and she felt strangely uncomfortable once more. As if, somehow, she had been doing something wrong. And as if this man here had, too.

He gave a brief nod, turned, and walked out, down the cramped, empty aisle, without a backward glance. Sarah stood still a moment longer, then looked round one last time, in some vague hope of spotting her bag, sighed, and followed him out, out from the dry interior and onto the wet sand. People were emerging from their makeshift shelters – torn scraps of fuselage sticking out of the sand; hastily propped up plastic blankets. The strange, drenched bald man who had sat through it all outside without flinching got slowly to his feet, a faint, eerie smile on his lips. A few metres away, the trees of the large forest were dripping wet, their leaves still drooping under the burden of heavy raindrops.

The small camp was coming back to life.

* * *

“Dear diary. Day Three stuck on this island. Some of my fellow castaways are beginning to think we’ll never be rescued. I’m still optimistic – I think – but if nobody’s come within a couple of days, I’ll be starting to get worried, too…” Sarah lowered herself carefully down from the tree where she had been pulling mangoes off the branches and tossing them to the ground below. “And talking to yourself,” she said firmly to no-one in particular, letting go of the last branch and landing firmly on her feet, “doesn’t necessarily mean you’re mad.” She gathered up her mangoes in her arms, her brief, oral diary fading unrecorded into the clear morning air, and trekked back towards the nearby beach. The inactivity had been getting to her, and she had felt a growing need to do something, anything to keep herself busy and make herself useful.

Otherwise IÂ’ll end up like that blond bimbo Shannon, she thought distastefully, adjusting her hold on her heavy load of fruit. Lying on the beach in a skimpy bikini, sunbathing while everyone else is getting on with doing somethingÂ… She was not certain how Boone, the blond womanÂ’s brother, put up with her. She wasnÂ’t even nice to him. Although at least Shannon and she had one point in common: they were both among the dwindling number of people who were holding on firmly to hopes of soon being rescued.

When the beach came into view, she found a fair number of the fifty or so survivors gathered round in a loose half-circle. SayidÂ’s voice reached her as she approached curiously. She set down her mangoes and walked up to the edge of the crowd.

“As you and the others know, we hiked up the mountain in an attempt to help the rescue team locate us,” the Iraqi soldier was saying. Sarah had not known that, as a matter of fact, but she listened intently. Her hopes were, however, short-lived. “The transceiver failed to pick up a signal,” Sayid told them simply.

There were groans of disappointment, mutters of despair. Sarah grimaced, but refused to abandon all hope. This was not a lethal blow, and should not be seen as one. It simply meant that – despite what she had initially believed – this island was probably uninhabited. “We weren’t able to send out a call for help,” Sayid went on, a revelation which generated further groans and dispirited mutterings. “But we're not giving up,” he continued, and Sarah smiled. That’s the spirit! As a soldier, Sayid obviously knew how to keep up people’s morale, and he was putting that ability to good use. “If we gather electronic equipment – your cellphones, laptops – I can boost the signal and we can try again. But that may take some time, so for now, we should begin rationing our remaining food. If it rains, we should set up tarps to collect water.”

She nodded at that, as did several of the others. It was what she and many of them had been waiting for: clear instructions, someone who would take the lead, organise things, give them something to focus on, a clear and productive sense of purpose. Hurley had joined the crowd by now, and she gave him a quick nod.

“I need to organize three separate groups. Each group should have a leader. One group for water. I'll organize that.”

Sarah nodded again. That was a good idea, and sounded like something she could help with. “You in on that?” She turned her head as the man beside her spoke to her.

“Sure!” she said, putting on a deliberately cheerful, optimistic expression. “I’m glad to have something to do. Steve, right?” She had talked to him briefly the previous day. “Shall we volunteer?”

Sayid was saying something about organising food and electronics. Sarah listened to him, hanging on to every word, a faint but definite smile on her face.

* * *