Another fly died heroically as it tried its very best to irritate Laila, and she grimaced as she looked for something to wipe it on before deciding her pants had become filthy enough that a fly corpse wouldn't make much difference. The island, she assumed it was an island considering what the pilot had said, had started to annoy her from the moment she had regained consciousness. Now it seemed the place wanted her to explode in fury.
"What are you doing?" She flinched as her still painful arm twinged as she turned. "Stop building a nest and get us out of here!"
She had helped, at first, but had become so tired from carrying things that the pilot had laid out in one place and had then started carrying much further down the beach, away from the plane, that still rumbled and roared as its engine continued to try to work for some unfathomable reason. The pilot ignored her as she arranged several sticks, impaled in the sandy ground within the confines of the jungle.
And by 'help', she had carried things only she thought were necessary. Such as one of her suitcases that the pilot had grumbled about when Laila had pointed to it and ordered the pilot to get. The suitcase had almost knocked Laila from her feet and, when she opened it, she found it only held one of her sets of stage clothing and nothing that she could change into. Unless she decided to go for a swim in one of her sequinned outfits that looked remarkably like swimwear. She wouldn't of course. Those outfits were expensive and salt water would ruin them.
"Look, princess, why don't you make yourself useful and head down the beach? See if you can find any of the others." The pilot still seemed more bothered about the nobodies than Laila! "Pick a direction and go. Please."
"Shouldn't we have stayed closer to the plane? If rescuers fly overhead, they're more likely to stop if they see people. Right?" Laila rose to her feet, wobbling in the dusty, dry sand and did her best to brush away the bits sticking to her backside. "Besides, they're probably dead, anyway. And I don't want to go anywhere alone. What if something attacked me?"
"I can only hope." The pilot unravelled the parachute and fitted it over the sticks before looking up. "We moved because we don't want to be near that."
She pointed toward the plane, much further away now. Laila had already said they should use the plane as a shelter but the pilot had mumbled in some language or other. Laila had narrowed the language down to either Italian or French. They sounded similar, didn't they? Regardless, the pilot had continued moving things from the pile she had made to another pile, much further away, which seemed utterly pointless to Laila.
"Why? It looks intact. Considering it doesn't have a cockpit. It's dry, out of the Sun and it has comfortable seating that can turn into beds." She had decided she wasn't going to let this woman make all the decisions, picking up the suitcase that had nothing in it she could use. "I'm going back. You can play at making forts if you like. I'll be safe and cozy."
"Go right ahead. When it blows up, I'll say a prayer for you." The parachute had become secured by now with other, smaller sticks and the thing looked decidedly uncomfortable and uninviting. The pilot pointed at the plane again. "I'm no engineer, but even I know planes don't work like that. That engine should have died hours ago, but it's still running, somehow. If something like that isn't working, the chances of it blowing up are more than I'm willing to bet on. But, please, go. Be 'cozy'."
Laila looked at the pilot, giving her the kind of glare she saved for paparazzi that had tried to take more compromising, risqué pictures (that she hadn't arranged for them to 'accidentally' see). Then she looked at the plane, the engine still roaring. Then she looked at the pilot again before throwing her suitcase back to the sand and sitting down again. She lapsed into silence while the pilot continued to work on a shelter that Laila wouldn't put a dog in, and drummed her fingers against her lips before having a genius moment.
Flipping over the suitcase, she began to unzip the front pockets before exclaiming a loud, triumphant 'aha!' as she pulled out a flamboyant pair of sunglasses that she put on and almost sighed as the glare of the Sun diminished. She had another pair, both made exclusively for her 'Paradise Party' part of the act, but, selfishly, she zipped up the pocket again and put on her best smug face to rub salt in the pilot's wounds, only to see the pilot already a good twenty feet down the beach.
She didn't need the pilot, though. She could sit here all day and wait for rescue and it wasn't at all scary to find herself alone on an island in the middle of the ocean which, if she believed the pilot, shouldn't exist, and with a plane that may, or may not, explode at any moment far too close for Laila's comfort. Not at all scary. And the pilot could go off wherever she wanted and Laila didn't care. She was a strong, independent woman who didn't need nobody for nothin'. She had said so in more than one of her songs, so it was very much true.
"This is pointless." She struggled to keep up with the pilot's long strides. "Everybody says if you get lost, you should stay in one place and wait. Someone will come along eventually. Like at a fairground. You stay near the Hall of Mirrors, or something. Even if we're off-course a little bit, I'm a very valuable asset, they'll scour the whole ocean to find me. And you, I suppose, but you'll be more of a collateral rescue. But a rescue is a rescue, right? And ..."
"Do you ever shut up?" The pilot had stopped dead, causing Laila to bump into her back, the rough material of the pilot's backpack scraping Laila's skin. "I think I've found someone."
They had come some way from the plane, it's roaring still breaking the silence of the island, but no longer in sight as they had followed the gentle curve of the beach. Laila tilted her head to look around the pilot's far-too-muscular body that, she had to admit, gave the pilot an incredibly shapely backside in pants so tight that Laila felt certain the woman didn't wear anything underneath. She shook her head, remembering that the pilot had seen someone and Laila desperately hoped it wasn't Toby or Genna because she didn't fancy being lost on a tropical island with either of them wittering on the way they did.
It was Genna, though, and she wouldn't do much wittering. Considering that she looked dead. Laila took hesitant steps toward Genna's body, her hair even more of a mess than usual but no longer able to take any of Laila's advice about sorting it out and trying to look vaguely attractive. The pilot crouched beside the body and closed Genna's staring eyes, which Laila appreciated because they looked as though they had stared right into her, accusing her for something.
"I was going to fire her. Her and Toby, but for different reasons." She mumbled to herself and even managed to not shriek as a crab appeared from behind Genna's body. "I suppose I won't have to pay severance now."
"You're a monster." The pilot had the audacity to judge Laila! With a grunt, the pilot moved around and put her hands under Genna's armpits. "Grab her legs. We'll bury her in the jungle."
"I'm not touching that! Her! I mean I'm not touching her!" Laila stepped back. "I mean ... she's dead."
"Yes she is and she deserves the dignity of a burial where crabs and other things can't eat her. Now grab the legs and ..." The pilot stopped talking, shaking her head as Laila backed away, shaking hers. With a sigh, the pilot muttered something unintelligible under her breath and started to drag Genna up the beach.
She didn't understand, though. Laila had treated Genna badly because it was expected. No-one treated their PA's well. Not a single star did, but Laila had done other things, such as take out insurance for Genna that would pay out an immense amount of money, relatively, to her family should she die. They would become very comfortable now. Or when they got back to civilisation, that is. It wasn't that Laila didn't like Genna, but more to do with the fact that Genna had never fit in to Laila's image. She didn't belong.
From somewhere, the pilot had found a folding shovel from inside the backpack she wore and had soon dug a hole deep enough for Genna's body. Then, after carefully laying Genna in the hole, folding her arms across her chest, the pilot tossed the soil and sand over the top of Laila's former PA, performing the sign of the cross once she had finished and mumbling a prayer of some kind.
Meanwhile, Laila had stood far back, unable to help if she wanted to. If Genna had died, then Toby may have died too, and those other people that the pilot had mentioned, and that could mean they were the only people on this island and, as Laila had learned, the pilot didn't care that much for her. If the pilot decided to leave in the night, Laila wasn't certain she could survive alone. Once the pilot had finished, Laila moved to the grave, patting the surface with her hand, but that didn't seem enough to make the pilot lose that accusing look in her eyes.
"Will she be alright? Under there?" She looked around and gave the crab that had appeared from behind Genna's body a leery look. "You said crabs and things might ..."
"What do you care?" The pilot spun the backpack around and tucked her large arms into the straps, adjusting them as she sneered at Laila. "I'll dig her a better grave later. It should be fine for a while, but we need to find fresh water and hopefully somewhere that can provide better shelter than that tent."
"You mean you'll be moving all those things again?" Once again, Laila found herself skipping along, trying to keep up with this irritating woman. "It seems to me that you're just making things unnecessarily complicated."
"It's a matter of priorities." Holding on to both straps of the backpack, the pilot continued to stride along the beach, following it as it continued to curve, making Laila think the island might not be that big after all. "Safety first, so we got away from the plane. We have water enough for a few days, so shelter was next, but that shelter won't last if we get hit by a bad storm. So, we have to make sure we find water before we run out and better shelter before any storm hits, which can be regular things on these kinds of islands, and, because this place is isolated, with only ocean surrounding it, those storms can come in pretty fast with no warning. Is that explanation enough for you?"
"Car." Laila had stopped looking at the pilot because the pilot always seemed on the border of hitting her. So, instead, she had looked ahead and now her mouth hung open as she gaped at what she saw.
"What the hell are you talking about now?" The pilot had turned, walking backward as she had made her long-winded explanation and now threw up her hands in mock surrender. "You know what, you're crazy. You're crazy and cold and mean. Don't talk to me anymore."
"No. I mean ..." Laila tugged at the backpack straps because, otherwise, she would have to touch the pilot's incredibly strong-looking arm. She turned the pilot and pointed. "... there's a car. On the beach."
The pilot made a curse under her breath as she saw what Laila had seen. A car. It was absolutely, certainly, a car. A small, European-type car, but a car. Sat there on the beach, out of reach of the clutching tides, as though someone had driven it there to look out at the ocean and to take in the tranquility. Laila began to head toward the car, but the pilot had turned to look somewhere else, her eyes gazing upward, still muttering in that language that Laila still couldn't pin down.
Laila decided to see what the pilot found so fascinating that she thought it worth looking at more than the actual, real car they had found on an otherwise empty tropical island in the middle of nowhere. When she saw it, she had to admit, it was probably the most remarkable of the two objects to look at.
It looked like a radio telescope tower.
Laila slapped her neck, missing that particular fly, but she didn't care. That tower meant people, and people meant rescue.