Stranded With a Stranger - Chapter Two

Chapter Two
Chastity woke up with the sound of beating waves in her ears and sand in her nose. She struggled to open her eyes, panicking when she saw only blackness. She sat up, blinking furiously, and realized that she was in some kind of cave, with daylight behind her. Standing carefully, she took stock of herself. Her right arm was bleeding from a cut above her elbow. Her head ached. Her back and ribs felt bruised and abused. One ankle was twisted. All in all, not as bad as the average punishment from Vern. She concluded.
Leaving the cave, Chastity tried to remember how exactly she had gotten here. I was on a plane… she remembered the shot, the explosion. The plane crashed. She realized. It was almost enough to make her laugh. The first time she faced her fears, and the worst of them had been confirmed. She had been in a plane crash caused by some kind of terrorist, and now she was… where AM I? She looked up and down the beach, scanning the land for any sign of life. About 100 feet up the sand was a thick jungle. One side of the island was rocky outcroppings, jagged and deadly, with cliffs soaring high above the sand. The other side, from what she could see, was white sand sloping gently to the sea. “Desert island. Bloody brilliant.” She muttered aloud.
The thought that she should probably be completely panicked, sobbing in a ball on the beach, crossed her mind. Instead of terror and despair, however, she felt herself feeling numb. Underneath the numbness was a ridiculous, completely inappropriate sort of excitement. It occurred to her that being stranded on a deserted tropical island was something people told stories about, made movies about, dreamed of, feared. And now she was really doing it.
Quickly making a mental inventory, Chastity began to search for what she would need. The sun was still high in the sky, but she knew it would soon be night. She had no matches or other means of making a fire or creating light, so she needed a shelter as soon as possible. She began to search the jungle for suitable trees.
It wasn’t until Chastity had her beach shack half erected at the edge of the jungle that the body washed up. A dark form rolled out of the waves and lay limply on the beach. Not thinking anything at all, Chastity walked down to the form and pulled the body up onto the sand. Mind blank, she checked for signs of life and began the CPR she’d paid $50 to learn at the community college in one of the many towns she’d lived in, back in California. As she blew air into the man’s lungs, she dimly registered that it was the man from the plane, the one who wouldn’t give her the aisle seat.
She was shocked when he began to cough and retch, to breathe, to live. She’d learned the CPR because she needed it for her lifeguard job. She’d performed it on this man because she was overwrought and didn’t know what she was supposed to do and the sequence was drilled into her. She’d never really expected it to work, for something she did to restore life to a cold body. As the man sat up and looked around, Chastity began to shiver violently.
“My God.” He swore shakily, looking around. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s anywhere. There doesn’t seem to be anybody else.” She trailed off. “I don’t know.” She whispered.
“Hey.” The man touched her arm gently. “It’s ok. We’ll be ok.”
“How? We have no food, no water, no means of communication, no matches, no rope, no knife, no anything that’s of any use on a deserted island!” Chastity ticked the missing items off on her fingers, the enormity of their situation washing over her as she spoke. The man didn’t respond right away, just stood and took a look around the beach. “Let’s investigate that jungle.” He walked up the beach.
Chastity couldn’t move. She crouched, rooted to the sand, the waves lapping at her feet. I’m going to die here. The sky seemed to be crashing down on her, the sand closing in around her. She closed her eyes, her earlier sense of adventure and excitement totally lost. In its place was a deep dread, an assurance that this would end in disaster.