It appeared the pilot didn't care that Laila wore high heels, still (because she had no idea what she could step on), or that she only had one arm to support her amid the numerous near falls and the tangling roots and vines that seemed to have a personal vendetta against her. She stalked through the jungle in much the same way she stalked everywhere. Determined and steady. Every stride seeming to cover the same distance and at the same speed.
In contrast, Laila tripped, stumbled, became entangled, stuck and generally blocked at every tentative step she made. And the heat had become different. A stupefying, cloying heat that made it difficult to walk and breathe at the same time. And stopped her from talking, which the pilot probably enjoyed far more than she had any right to.
"Watch your step there." The pilot hooked her thumb over her shoulder, but didn't look back.
Laila did watch her step, but it didn't stop her putting her foot down and not finding any purchase except for something that felt soft and oozing, and she tumbled forward, arm flailing as she fell into something black and stinking. She managed a single yelp before disappearing into the black goop and clamping her mouth shut. It felt like an eternity before something grabbed a hold of her and dragged her back to the surface and she couldn't see whether it was the pilot that had her, or some kind of island monster that had caught her in its disgusting trap. A curtain of black, viscous liquid slid across her vision and she knew for a fact her personal hairdresser was going to quit before touching it again.
"That was your warning!" She coughed, retching and frantically wiping the goop from her face. "'Watch your step'? Oh. Oh! I think I'm going to be sick. What is this stuff?"
The pilot had dropped her to the side and now crouched beside where Laila had fallen in, dipping a finger into the goop that the jungle's undergrowth had covered up so well that Laila hadn't even seen it. And, obviously, not because she wasn't paying attention. As the pilot examined the goop, Laila wailed at the state of her clothing, covered in thick, black ickiness, seeping into places she didn't care to think about. And one of her shoes had fallen off, probably still within the puddle of black.
"It's oil." The pilot sniffed the residue on her finger and then wiped it on the ground. "Crude oil."
"Oil? Oil! Does that mean you can ... oh." She had started to think it could fuel the plane, forgetting that only half of it remained. "What does it mean?"
"I don't have any idea." The pilot looked around, found a length of a branch fallen from a tree and poked the oil. "Not deep, so I suspect it's not coming from a pocket below. Maybe dumped here?"
"Not deep? I nearly drowned in it!" Jumping to her feet, Laila saw the pilot draw out the stick. It only had a foot or so of oil on it and, there, resting on the surface, sat her shoe. "My shoe is ruined."
Reaching out with the stick, the pilot retrieved the shoe, handing it to Laila, before tossing the stick aside and setting off once again. They had walked for what felt like miles, except Laila could still just about hear the roar of the surf and the accompanying roar of the plane's engine, which still hadn't blown up or come to a stop, so probably not miles. Either way, they didn't seem any closer to the tower. Not that she could see that, now, through the thick wall of trees and bushes and the umbrella of leaves and branches above.
Grimacing, retching again, Laila returned the shoe to her foot and began her stumbling, tripping, entangling attempt to keep up with the pilot. And, where Laila felt as though she now sweated from parts of her body that generally didn't sweat, like her fingernails, the pilot looked almost none the worse for wear. A couple of small semi-circles under her armpits, that only seemed to bring attention to her muscles, and a light peppering of sweat upon her forehead. She didn't seem to have any trouble breathing, either, even though Laila almost had to stop every step to take in great gulps of air.
Another thing that had started to annoy her, joining an ever-growing list that was already a considerable length before reaching this island, was the sounds within the jungle. Unlike the shore, where the only things to disturb the silence were the engine and the surf, here, all manner of strange and ominous sounds assaulted her ears from all directions.
She assumed some of the noises were birds, and other noises were from insects, that sounded far too large and could probably eat her. Other sounds had her skipping away in fright as things rustled away in the undergrowth, or had her cringing as things overhead rattled and crashed through the branches and other things simply made noises for the sake of terrifying her. Shrieks and howls and wails that, despite the fact there were no walls, seemed to echo and propagate around them.
"So ..." The word hung in the air as she caught up with the pilot, who had stopped to take more short sips of water, holding out the bottle for Laila. "You have muscles. You don't see many women with muscles like that."
"Maybe you don't." The pilot seemed to refuse to look at Laila. Then again, Laila couldn't blame her, what with all the oil and terrible hair.
"I mean ... you just don't see many women so ... big." She pointed at a bicep that could, at a pinch, be as big as her head. "Do you work out?"
The pilot's head turned in that slow way people turned in order to show they couldn't believe someone had asked such a stupid question. She didn't answer straight away, looking Laila up and down as Laila tried to stay upright on her abused and damaged shoes. Then, with a sniff, she took the bottle back and took another sip before replacing the cap and putting the bottle back in her backpack.
"Yeah. I work out." As she shrugged the backpack onto her shoulders, the pilot looked a little strange, as though she felt embarrassed. "I do MMA."
"Oh. Right. Okay." Laila nodded a few times and began the tortuous process of trying to keep up with the pilot. She had to frown, though. "I don't know what that is. Is it like cooking?"
"Mixed martial arts." Again, the furtive, slightly embarrassed look and the pilot's already dark skin darkened a little more. "I do cage fighting when I'm not flying."
"That sounds exciting! Dangerous. A bit mad, actually, but exciting." It wasn't, but Laila had to do something to keep the woman talking, if only to take Laila's mind off something that just howled at them, possibly growled, from not too far away. "Do you win?"
"Yes."
"Do you win a lot?"
"Yes."
Before Laila could continue her questioning, the pilot pressed a hand against Laila's shoulder and pushed her back against a tree, her other hand covering Laila's mouth. At first, Laila considered fighting against the woman, ready to protest at the rough handling, but the proximity of the pilot, her body so close, those eyes looking out into the jungle, so intense and flickering, that Laila decided it wasn't so bad after all. Quite nice, in fact. She started to relax only to realise that relaxing in this jungle was probably a bad idea as something suddenly began to rush through the jungle, crashing and roaring as it came.
A rabbit flashed past, which seemed a little small to have made all that noise and the pilot dragged Laila down, deeper into the undergrowth as something far larger barrelled through the trees, passing them by without a second look and stampeding back into the trees chasing after the rabbit that had disappeared. Laila knew fierce creatures were out here! Fierce creatures and rabbits!
"What was that? A bear? A wolf?" As the pilot's hand slipped from her mouth, Laila tried to calm her breathing. "It looked enormous! Seven? Eight feet tall?"
"It was a fox. Two feet to its shoulder, max." Still, the pilot continued to look around before releasing Laila. "But they're both European species. How did they get here?"
"I don't know." Laila had started to grow hot for a very different reason. Here, even in the heat of the jungle, with all the sweat and dirt, the pilot smelled magnificent. Laila looked down between them. "I seem to have made you all dirty."
Oil had transferred from Laila onto the pilot's almost still pristine shirt, and onto her cheek where she had pressed herself against Laila's filthy, oil and sand covered hair. The pilot, too, looked down between them and then pushed herself back, brushing down the front of her shirt with her hands before rising to her full height and offering Laila a supporting hand.
"Come on. I want to get to that tower before it gets dark." Turning away, the pilot surveyed their surroundings. "We don't want to get caught out here in the dark. Who knows what other things are on this island."
That sounded stupidly ominous. The kind of words people said in movies and then got killed by the exact thing they had mentioned. Laila wasn't entirely certain that the pilot hadn't made a mistake about that thing that had almost crashed into them. Geography wasn't her best subject, but she knew enough to know where Europe was. She had to, she had an enormous following in Belgium, for some reason. She knew Europe was on the other side of the continental US. At least, she thought it was. How far did you have to go around the world before it was on this side of the US?
The creature did seem a whole lot larger than a fox to Laila. Then again, she had become strangely distracted by the pilot. Her closeness, the heat from her body, a very different and far more welcome heat than the heat of the island. The surprising softness of the woman's muscles that Laila had clutched in terror as that gigantic creature that she seriously doubted was a fox, had rampaged through the jungle after a poor, terrified, normal looking rabbit. She didn't like where these thoughts had started to go.
Perhaps it was because they were both stuck on this island together with no-one else around, the sheer terror of the experience causing Laila to latch on to the nearest available, if reasonably attractive, person. Laila wasn't averse to slumming it. She had even dated people that were only TV stars. The pilot, though? That was a rung on the ladder so far below Laila's usual preferences that the pilot might as well not even set foot on it. She had no hope, no chance, no possibility of ever getting with Laila. Very, very few people did. A select few, and the criteria for her choices usually involved how they could best improve Laila's career.
It wasn't that she didn't believe in love, with the right person from the right strata of society, but she loved her career more. She was no fool. She knew damned well that the industry chewed up women like her and spat them out without the slightest care. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of women performers that had truly, monumentally, broken past mere superstardom to the status of legends and she had no illusions about her chances there, so she had to make a lot of money, right now, and that involved 'falling' for the right people as a business choice.
The pilot wasn't even in the running, no matter how much she made Laila's stomach flip with every curt reply and dismissive look. About to say something to put a stop to that idea before it could take root, Laila saw the pilot push aside a curtain of hanging vines, revealing a clearing beyond. Before Laila could urge caution, the pilot stepped out, allowing the vines to fall back into place and not even bothering to hold them for Laila.
That made her blood boil! The sheer arrogance of the woman! Giving Laila those kinds of heated looks that held so much promise and possibility and then treating her like this? No. No! She stood no chance with Laila now, no matter how many lingering looks they shared. In fact, Laila opened the veil of vines ready to give the pilot a good talking to, until she saw what lay beyond the vines.
The talking to could wait until they had checked to see if anyone still lived.