Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Evie woke up to a bird standing right above her, cocking it's head to get a better look at her. She shrieked, sitting up and causing it to fly away immediately—but also wake up Lottie, who had just been tangled in her arms. "What's wrong?" she mumbled, rubbing her tired eyes.
"I—Um, I just. . . nothing," she whispered finally, glancing around at the rest of the girls who were slowly waking up. It took a moment for everyone to regain consciousness, not just by awaking but also by remembering where they were.
Van groaned, rubbing her eyes in frustration, "Great, so this isn't just a bad dream," she said sarcastically. There were a few murmurs of agreement or snorts, but after that, the only sound was the rustling of leaves and birds singing in the morning.
It wasn't until Taissa stepped forward seemingly out of nowhere, that the morning felt sombre, "We should probably bury them now," she stated. Everyone mournfully glanced at the plane, but no one got up. Once Van stood up, slowly the team joined her, feeling compelled to help out, however, Evie hung back. Instead, she found herself limping towards Coach Ben, to make sure he made it through the night—it broke her heart to think he suffered through all of that, only to end up dying in the end. She figured there were enough corpses to bury from the initial crash, she wasn't ready to add another.
When she saw Ben, his eyes were still closed—he hadn't moved much over the course of a couple of days, but he was in the same position she left him the previous night. Her heart raced, hoping that he was just sleeping and not dead, as she realised that he was the only adult left. She crouched down to his level, shaking his shoulders in the foolish hope that he'd wake up—and it paid off. He gasped awake, causing Evie to stumble backwards in shock, "What the fuck!" he shouted, taking a minute to regain his surroundings. Evie let out a breath of relief, hiding her face in her hands as she rubbed the frustration out of it. "Fuck, I can't believe we're still here."
"We're going to bury everyone today. . . do you want to come?" she clutched the tree, using it to pull herself up. Once she was stable, she finally let go and stepped back to read her coach's face. After thinking about it for a moment, he shook his head. "Fair enough. I'll let you rest," she mumbled. He offered her a weak smile, then seemingly fell back asleep.
When she arrived back at the campsite, she noticed that everyone was digging four graves with random bits of metal that had fallen off the plane. She found a metal stick and got on her knees, helping the girls out by shovelling dirt out with Van.
After an hour, the graves finally looked deep enough. Evie sat back on her haunches, wiping the sweat off her forehead, looking around and seeing everyone in different stages of processing what had happened. Feeling Van tap, her on the shoulder, she looked up only for the redhead to point to the plane, "Can you help me get Rachel?"
"She's injured. It's good enough she helped dig," Lottie defended, shocking both Van and Evie. "I'll help," with that, she went inside the plane while Evie sighed, stretching out her ankle and rolling it. She winced in pain, realising this was going to take a lot longer to heal than she wanted. The question was, would the rescue team come before she had to put any more weight on it? Or was she fucked? Only time will tell.
