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Venturers Lost - Chapter One: Eventful Arrival
By Dac
Venturers Lost
Starring
In order of appearance…
Max – Chief Venturer Commissioner with a mind half in, half out
PT – Venturer Leader with odd ideals
Micko – Music fanatic
Steve – Hyperactive sound and technic worker
Bryn – Sleep-losing vagrant
Tom – Mildly psychotic loner
Dean – Quiet hero
Hamish – Semi-conscious character
Matt Kerrigan – Prone to injury
Caz – Karaoke star
Duncan – Perfectionist brother of Hamish
Tamara – In need of quiet
Lippy – Heart in the right place, brain yet to be found
Jess ‘Wangas’ – Unable to adapt
Aidan – Looking extremely lost
Kate ‘Trippy’ – Needs to sort out priorities
Tara – Doesn’t think things through
Erin – Perhaps the sanest
Megan – What DOES she do?
Elliot – Cowardly badass
Brendan – Large hairy control asserter
Emily – Idealist of bad ideas
Leon – Big guy with a deep voice
Chrissie – Accomplice of Tara
Lil – Appears randomly
Yungzi – Mindless bubble fanatic
Karen – Cricket nut
Roland – Royal asshole
Chapter One – Eventful Arrival
12th of August 2005.
4:02 PM
"You'll never believe this!" The topic title read. Max had not posted on the forum for some amount of days now, and this was his first topic in a while. Clicking the topic, the forum’s users found the following message:
"The Red Cross has confirmed that they will be sponsoring us for a free trip to Phuket to assist with the rebuilding of a hospital that was devastated in last year's tsunami. Pack your bags everybody, because the trip has been paid for and we're leaving next week!"
Many dollars of mobile credit were lost with the amount of excited phone calls and SMSes that ensued. An impromptu training day was organised the following Saturday, with PT showing everybody numerous ways to remember each other's names through group juggling and circular dodge ball. Although a few people fell asleep throughout the meeting because Micko organised a movie night fundraiser the night before, the day went well. Everybody learned what they needed to survive the two week trip... But nothing could have prepared them for what happened.
***
August 22nd, 2005
After a long enduring bus trip to Queensland airport, during which Sophie face-planted off her seat and broke her glasses, the team got off the bus and headed in to have dinner before the flight. Everybody went their own ways to get dinner and met back up to eat at the food court.
"Hey, where's Bryn?" Steve Rundle enquired between mouthfuls of Red Rooster. After some moments of confusion, Bryn was seen walking back from the duty free shop with a now bulging backpack making mysterious clinking sounds, stopping at the main entry of the airport to steal the doormat.
Everybody went to check in, but not before the entire team was searched because a live round of ammunition was found in the lobby. The team boarded the plane after a messy incident involving Tom and a computer.
An hour into the flight, and it was uneventful up until that point, save for the steward in drag being pushed down the aisle on a trolley...
"This is your captain speaking; we are experiencing some minor turbulence so I would suggest you buckle your seatbelts and pray to whichever deity you choose to believe in. Thank you."
Looking out the window, the captain and his co-pilot could be seen parachuting into the sea. Everyone swung around to look out the windows on the other side, noticing that the plane was missing a wing (the flight inspection crew didn't have their coffee that morning).
Somehow, after everyone else blacked out, Dean rushed into the cockpit and performed an astonishingly successful landing, aside from the fact that the plane nosedived into a large rock. That’s right, a rock. Dean had piloted the plane onto the beach of an island densely covered in jungle. After absorbing the shock of the impact, the impromptu pilot went to rouse those who hadn’t woken in the crash. But the plane wasn’t done yet. Steve, being the first to leap, landed on a small rocky platform on the side of the missing wing. He scrambled across the ledges, making it to the ground safely. The others followed unsteadily. Those on the ground helped to catch anyone who fell, and soon the entire group were on the sand of a beach. Looking up, however, they saw what the plane was wedged into. It wasn’t a rock at all, it was a cliff face. No one thought much of this at first, but then Hamish, in a fury, picked up a rock and hurled it at the plane, and there was a large panic. The plane wasn’t wedged in as much as they thought. The rock dislodged it and it fell from the cliff and rolled down the cliff…towards the group. Everyone dived to the side as the plane rolled onto the beach, somehow landing with its nose submerged in the sand and the tail poking out. Everyone stared at each other in silence.
***
After going back inside the wreckage to inspect, Kerrigan came back out with a battery-operated CD player and put an Offspring CD on. The disclaimer track got people laughing and helped to calm everybody down. After a head check, it turned out that all of the venturers on the plane survived, and nobody else. What are the odds? Oh, and Steve Rundle had a gaping hole in his head, but he was okay.
***
After organising the rabble, Max sent a group to collect firewood to start a signal fire. After hours of chopping trees, they came back with a massive pile of wood which they set down next to the giant smoking fireball that was their plane, and started a fire so people would see them. Meanwhile, Kerrigan kept the CD player playing the CD over and over, until the batteries died half way through "Amazed". At about the same time, Bryn came lurching out of the wreckage looking overjoyed that he'd found his backpack after hours of searching for it. He opened it and took out the doormat that he stole from the airport, and dropped in at the entrance to the plane. Steve burst out of the cargo hold of the plane on his mountain bike. It survived the crash without a scratch because he put duct tape on the frame to prevent the paint from scraping.
At 8PM, Max called a meeting to discuss what everyone is going to do. Micko showed up horribly bruised and swollen because he was skanking on the plane when it crashed into the cliff face. PT showed up with a handful of juggling balls and a stopwatch, and Bryn stumbled into the meeting, threw up and passed out. Not to be deterred, Max began speaking.
"Now, you might be quick to assume that our first priority is to get off this island. That's not entirely true, what we need to concentrate on is finding means to keep ourselves alive, because we don't know how long it's going to take us to get out of here."
At that point, Caz raised her hand.
"Could you repeat that, Max? I didn't hear a word of it."
Max repeated his spiel, as the first one was made inaudible by the sound of low-flying planes overhead (just kidding, Max was facing the wrong way. There were no planes). He continued his speech.
"Now, we can't just wait around to be rescued. We're all going to need to do our part to keep us alive. Do we have any volunteers?"
KAAFWOOMPAAAHHHHHH
The meeting was interrupted by the sound of one of the plane's engines exploding as Kerrigan tried to siphon fuel from it to make a fire. He ran screaming to the beach and dived into the water, just as the wave pulled back and he face-planted into the sand. He got back up and dived into the water (he aimed correctly this time), then ran out screaming as the salt water sank into his burnt skin. The meeting continued unabated.
Soon, PT started to organise units in hopes of teamwork and progress.
"Tom, if you want to look for food you can take a team into the jungle, but don't..."
"No way!" Tom interrupted. "I don't need a team. I work alone and I can handle myself!"
Tom stood up with a smug look on his face, wielding airline cutlery and a warped Frisbee, and marched into the darkness of the jungle wearing his sunglasses as the adults yelled at him to come back. Within seconds, he was gone.
"I'll organise a search team," Duncan piped up. "Everybody who wants to help look for a way off this island, prepare the supplies you can and get some sleep. We're going hiking at the break of dawn."
The crowd began to chatter with discussion of who would go, and continued for several minutes until Tamara began screaming at the top of her lungs for everyone to be quiet. Nobody listened. Everybody made their plans for the next day, and a large amount of people tried to find a comfortable place to sleep and prepared to go with Duncan. Not many people stayed behind. The meeting continued, and everybody got assigned jobs.
"Now..." PT said. "Who's up for group juggling?"
Everybody left and went to bed.
August 23rd
3:20 AM
Twang....
....
....
....
....
Twang...
....
....
....
....
TWANG
Everybody jolted awake at once to see what the sound was, to discover Caz madly strumming a guitar she made out of a coconut, two shoots of bamboo, fishing wire and paperclips. Everybody stared at her until she silently put it down and went to sleep.
5:47 am
"Bryn, just get up!" came the yells from about eight people.
"I can't, I'm checking the temperature gauge," he mumbled in a slurred voice.
The search team gave up and left without him. They were set for a long day, after a big breakfast of...nothing. Meanwhile, back at the ranch/crash site, Lippy came up with an ingenious plan... if she were taller, planes would be able to see her better! She set off rummaging through the wreck for something to make stilts out of. As she ran towards the wreckage, PT noticed Kerrigan still asleep on a rock, and went to wake him up.
"Matt..."
No reply.
"Matt, it's morning."
Again, no reply. PT gave Kerrigan a gentle nudge, only to see him collapse into a pile of dust. PT jumped in terror.
“HOLY SH-”
"What? I'm already awake!"
PT turned around to see Kerrigan standing behind him, bright red and missing a few layers of skin which had formed into a perfect cocoon of himself where he was sleeping. A large wave splashed onto the beach and Matt got drenched in salt water again. The sizzling could be heard again as he ran around screaming.
Lippy came trudging back to base camp, with one foot lodged through the handle of a suitcase, the other on top of a broken computer monitor tied to her foot with the power cable.
"Hey Max," She said, "I just increased my productivity by 12 percent!"
"That's great, now can you find me a seat?" Jess whined. "And while you're at it, go get me a nail file. This is terrible on my nails!"
For no apparent reason, Aidan walked past with no shirt on, a pair of pants on his head, and swinging a broom.
"So we can't use the food from the plane's kitchen?" Jess inquired.
"No, the kitchen is buried in the wreckage," answered Max. “We can't get in, and if we did all of the food was probably ruined anyway."
Lippy went to sit down with the group of people but stumbled and tripped over her stilts and KO'd herself on a rock.
"We should probably go into the jungle and find Tom...he has been gone since last night," said Caz.
"If you're volunteering, then go for it. I'm not going in there," Jess argued.
Nobody wanted to go into the jungle, but someone had to. The group decided to play a game of chance to see who went in.
***
Meanwhile, the search team was wandering along a dirt trail running between the beach and the jungle when they heard a loud echoing scream coming from the maze of trees, somewhere in the distance.
"Oh no, that sounded like Tom!" Trippy said. "Duncan, go in there and help him! Then come back and finish my homework."
"I don't think homework's going to do you much good here," said Duncan. “And I'm not going in there."
As with the other group, nobody was game to go exploring, so the group decided to play a game of chance to see who the lucky one would be.
***
The group at the campsite had resorted to drawing straws, and only two were left, between Max and Jess. Tension was in the air. Tension and malaria. After a long stare-off, the two drew straws at the same time.
...
"They're the same size!" exclaimed Caz.
"What? That can’t be right!" mused PT. “Who got the short one?"
"What do you mean? Why would there be a short one?" asked Tara, who distributed the straws.
A loud collective groan rose from the group. At that moment, a noise was heard from the wreckage of the plane, and out came Hamish, who everyone thought was killed when the plane rolled down the cliff. Apparently he’d slipped in a broken window or door, or something.
"Hamish! Come quick! Look in the jungle!" yelled Bryn, who was conscious again. Hamish, in his half-dead state, didn't understand what was happening, so he went wandering off into the jungle. He was seen being yanked into a bush screaming, then went suddenly silent. A long silence followed from the group.
Snip
PT cut the end off a straw and started distributing them again. By that point, however, it had become clear that Max's mind was already starting to falter, as he was trying to extract his kidney with a pointy stick. He seemed to be having trouble piercing his skin.
"Hey Matt!" Max beckoned to Kerrigan. “Come here for a second!"
Matt walks over and Max stabbed him in the stomach, the stick easily penetrating his burnt skin. Once again, Matt ran around screaming, this time with a stick poking out of his stomach.
***
Some time passed, and people were beginning to starve, as the bats, large as they were, had been passed around the whole group. Max passed the time by telling the story of his zany adventure to Uzbekistan when Erin interrupted the story.
"Hey Caz, what is that guitar made of?"
"Umm..." Caz shuffled around a bit then looked up at it. "Bamboo... Fishing wire... Paper clips and coconuts..."
Everybody’s faces suddenly lit up, except for Tara, who took about three minutes to get it.
"Hey!" Tara exclaimed excitedly. “We could use the coconuts to hunt for food!"
Another collective groan rose.
"I'll show you where I found them!" Caz said as she stood up.
The group rose to their feet (except for Jess who was still whinging about her nails, and Lippy who was still out cold after she wanged her head) and followed Caz. She started walking towards the jungle, and an uneasy feeling worked its way into the group.
"Don't worry!" said Caz, "It's not far in at all!”
The group marched on...
***
Meanwhile, Duncan and the search party were heading down a dirt trail. It seemed unusually neat, too much so to be naturally formed. The group's previous foray into the jungle came to no avail, and the general opinion among the group was that going back in was too risky at the time.
"Wait! Everybody quiet!" yelled Duncan. "Do you hear that? It sounded like... chanting!"
The group listened quietly, and could indeed hear chanting...words could vaguely be made out...
...Did you just say underpants?
All eyes turned to Micko, who had his Discman blasting Los Capitanes into his skull loud enough for everyone to hear. Not being able to hear what anyone was saying, he started skanking off into the distance until Steve chased after him on his bike and brought him back.
"I'm really getting hungry," said Megan, who had tagged along with the search team.
"Yeah, we should go see if the other teams found any food yet," added Elliot.
The team agreed to end the search for the day, as it had proved fruitless and they would not be able to make it back to base if they went much further.
6/27/2005 8:21:00 PM
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