The Red Hand
Where am I? Why am I here? Who is this next to me?
These were my first thoughts as it seemed I had lost my memory from the crash and as I heaved myself to my feet under the pale glimmer of the night sky, I leant on my left arm and an incredible pain surged from my elbow. It was broken and then I realised the enormity of my situation. I was stuck in a dark and sinister rain forest with no water nor food and a poor, dead, little boy next to me. ***
We had set off from Rodríguez Ballón International Airport in Peru, after our family holiday where I spent the whole time playing and messing about with my brother Philip. As I entered the plane it didn’t look or feel very safe. It looked more like a Ryan Air flight then a British Airways flight. It was a night flight so as soon as I reached my seat I tried to get some sleep.
The crashes of the storm and thunder woke me up. Why we went in monsoon season I will never know. The air hostess had to shout, so she could be heard over the thunder.
“We are experiencing extreme turbulence!” Her words were cold and blunt, and then suddenly Boom! It happened the plane was struck by lightning and I no longer had the comfort of the floor beneath my feet. I accelerated to the canopy below at a tremendous speed and clung to my brother with all the strength in my body. I didn’t want him to die; he was the only other member of my family to survive the lightning strike. The one other passenger that I could see when falling from the plane got caught in the canopy and broke her neck. Thump! We crashed through the canopy and I was out cold along with my brother. ***
My famished stomach cried out for food early in the morning. There were multiple plants and animals, but I had seen enough nature programmes to know a lot were poisonous, unfortunately not enough to know which ones. Therefore I stewed in hunger, until around midday I decided I wasn’t going to survive loafing around all day; so I went to have a look around. Quite soon the soil under my bare feet started to get damper and then wet. I felt a sudden thirst leap on to my dry quivering lips as I realised I had discovered a stream. Then a thought went through my head about the family of the poor boy who I had found dead, next to me when I had woken up. So I retraced my steps, picked him up and started carrying him. He was small, about eight years old, so it shouldn’t have been too hard to carry him to, what I was hoping might be, a short journey to civilisation.
I walked with the boy on my back for an hour or