The screaming had stopped hours ago.
Eliza stared at the wreckage scattered across the beach, her designer blouse now torn and stained with blood that wasn’t hers. The setting sun cast long shadows across the white sand, transforming the debris into monstrous silhouettes. Seventeen survivors had dragged themselves from the ocean after Flight 2783 went down. Seventeen out of one hundred and forty-three.
“We need to gather what we can before dark,” said a deep voice behind her.
She turned to face a tall man with close-cropped gray hair. His left arm hung awkwardly at his side, but his face betrayed no pain.
“I’m Jim,” he said, extending his right hand. “Former military. You’re the pharmaceutical executive, right? I was a few rows behind you.”
“Eliza,” she replied, taking his hand. Strange how they had been strangers just hours ago, flying from Singapore to Los Angeles, and now their lives were inextricably linked. “I don’t know anything about survival.”
Jim nodded toward the tree line. “None of us signed up for this. But night’s coming. We need shelter.”
By day three, they had established a semblance of order.
The seventeen survivors had split into functional groups. Jim had naturally assumed leadership, organizing shelter construction from plane fragments and jungle materials. A young backpacker named Kai, who had been traveling the world after dropping out of medical school, tended to the injured. Others focused on gathering food or maintaining signal fires.
Justin Frost sat apart from the others, meticulously arranging his salvaged belongings. The tech billionaire’s white linen suit was remarkably clean considering their circumstances. His private security consultant, Vince, never strayed far from his side.
“I’ve activated my emergency beacon,” Justin announced during their makeshift community dinner around the fire. “My company will be looking for me. They have resources governments don’t.”
“The beacon signal won’t penetrate this part of the Pacific,” said Raquel, a commercial pilot who had been deadheading on the flight. Her face was still bruised from impact. “We’re hundreds of miles off any established flight path.”
“My technology will work,” Justin insisted, turning away from her.
From the edge of the group, Professor Elliott Hayes studied their interactions with clinical detachment. The anthropologist had been returning from a research expedition. “Fascinating,” he murmured to himself, making mental notes on the social hierarchy already forming.
On day seven, the rain began.
It poured relentlessly, turning their camp into a muddy nightmare. The crude shelters leaked, leaving everyone damp and miserable. Tempers shortened as basic comforts disappeared.
“The food is running out,” said Nina, a flight attendant who had survived with a fractured wrist. “The fruit we’ve gathered won’t last more than another day.”
“We need to explore deeper into the island,” Jim suggested, looking at the thick jungle that dominated the interior. “There might be more resources there.”
“I’m not eating any more fruit,” complained Justin, throwing a half-eaten mango into the sand. “I need protein. We should be fishing.”
“Then build a fishing spear,” snapped Raquel.
“That’s what you people are for,” Justin replied, gesturing vaguely at the group.
Eliza noticed how quickly “we” had become “you people” in Justin’s vocabulary. She saw how his security man Vince had begun hoarding items—a pocket knife, a lighter, a first aid kit—that should have been shared.
That night, someone stole the emergency medical supplies from Kai’s makeshift infirmary.
By day fourteen, the group had split.
Justin, Vince, and three others had moved to the other side of the beach, establishing a separate camp with their own rules and resources. They had the lighter, most of the salvaged tools, and had begun building a barricade around their portion of beach.
“This island isn’t that big,” Jim told the remaining eleven as they huddled under their leaking shelter. “There aren’t enough resources for division.”
“They took most of the antibiotics,” Kai said quietly. “Jorge’s leg wound is getting infected.”
Professor Hayes scribbled in his waterlogged notebook. “Classic in-group/out-group dynamics,” he muttered. “Resource scarcity accelerates tribal behavior.”
“This isn’t an anthropological study,” Eliza snapped. “This is our lives.”
Hayes looked up, blinking as if surprised to be addressed. “On the contrary, Ms. Mendoza. This is the purest form of human study. Strip away societal constraints, and what remains? We’re watching it unfold in real time.”
On day twenty-two, Jorge died.
They buried him in the soft sand near the tree line. The infection had spread too quickly without proper medication. During the makeshift funeral, Eliza watched Justin’s group watching them from a distance.
“We need those medical supplies back,” she told Jim afterward.
“I’ll talk to them,” he promised.
He returned with a broken nose and without the supplies.
That night, as Jim slept fitfully, Eliza and Raquel whispered plans to each other. Nina and Kai joined them, then others. Professor Hayes observed silently before finally nodding his agreement.
Day twenty-three brought a predawn raid.
Six of them crept toward Justin’s camp while the others created a distraction on the beach. They had fashioned crude weapons—sharpened sticks, a makeshift club, a jagged piece of metal from the plane wreckage.
The raid was quick and violent. Vince had been expecting them. In the chaos, blood was spilled on both sides. Eliza found herself standing over an unconscious Vince, a bloodied rock in her hand, unsure how many times she had struck him.
They retrieved the medical supplies, but at a cost. One of their group, a quiet accountant named Michael, had been stabbed in the confrontation. He died before they reached their camp.
“This is what we’ve become,” Kai whispered, tears streaming down his face as he clutched the reclaimed medical kit. “Twenty-three days.”
By day thirty, the boundary between the two camps had been formalized with a line of rocks and debris across the beach. Armed guards stood watch on both sides. Fishing territories were established and violently defended. Fresh water sources became contested ground.
Eliza found herself volunteering for guard duty more often than not. Something in her had changed—hardened. Her corporate negotiation skills had given way to a more primal form of problem-solving. She kept the jagged metal shard with her at all times.
“You’ve adapted remarkably well,” Professor Hayes commented one evening as she sharpened her weapon.
“Is that what you call it?” she asked without looking up.
“Anthropologically speaking, yes. You’ve shed your societal skin faster than most.” He tapped his notebook. “I’ve been documenting the transformation in all of us. How quickly we revert to tribal mechanisms when structures fail.”
“And you? Have you transformed too, Professor?”
He smiled thinly. “I’m still observing. For now.”
On day forty-five, they spotted a boat on the horizon.
For a brief, beautiful moment, both camps abandoned their weapons and ran to the beach, waving frantically and feeding their signal fires. Ancient enemies became desperate allies in the face of potential rescue.
But the boat changed course, moving away from the island despite their frantic efforts.
As it disappeared from view, the temporary unity shattered. Accusations flew—Justin’s group claimed Jim’s people hadn’t maintained proper signal fires. Jim’s group accused Justin of hoarding materials that could have made their signals more visible.
By nightfall, the beach was once again divided, the boundary more heavily fortified than before.
That night, Eliza couldn’t sleep. She sat on the beach, staring at the endless ocean.
“They’ll come for us,” Raquel said, sitting beside her.
“Will they?” Eliza asked. “And if they do, what will they find? What will we be by then?”
Day sixty brought the storm.
It hit with catastrophic force, destroying both camps’ shelters and washing away their boundaries. The survivors were forced into the jungle, seeking higher ground as the beach disappeared under violent waves.
In the chaos of evacuation, old divisions were temporarily forgotten. Justin helped a limping Kai up the slope. Jim pulled one of Justin’s allies from a flash flood. Nature’s fury made their human conflicts seem petty by comparison.
They huddled together in a cave as the storm raged, seventeen strangers reduced to eleven survivors, once again forced into proximity.
“We can’t go back to how it was,” Jim said quietly as lightning illuminated the cave. “We won’t survive.”
“There’s nothing left to go back to,” Justin replied, his once-immaculate suit now rags, his face gaunt from weeks of insufficient nutrition. “The camps are gone.”
Eliza studied their faces in the dim light. They had all changed so drastically from the people who had boarded Flight 2783. The corporate executive, the tech billionaire, the anthropologist, the pilot—those identities had been stripped away, revealing something more fundamental beneath.
“So we start over,” she said finally. “But differently this time.”
Professor Hayes looked up from his sodden notebook. “Can we?” he asked. “Or is this who we’ve always been beneath the veneer of civilization?”
When the storm finally passed on day sixty-three, they emerged to find a transformed landscape. The beach had been reshaped, debris scattered or washed away entirely. Nature had erased their territorial boundaries.
They stood together at the edge of the jungle, eleven people who had once been strangers, then enemies, now something undefined.
“We need to rebuild,” Jim said, surveying the damage. “Together this time.”
Eliza noticed Justin and Vince exchange a glance. She saw how Raquel’s hand tightened around her makeshift spear. She felt the weight of her own weapon, still secured at her waist.
Professor Hayes observed them all, his academic detachment now tinged with something darker, more participatory. His notebook was gone, but Eliza suspected he was still recording everything in his mind, still analyzing their descent.
“Together,” Justin echoed, but there was something in his tone that made Eliza uneasy.
As they walked down to the altered beach, eleven figures silhouetted against the rising sun, Eliza wondered what they would build this time. And how long it would take before it all fell apart again.
The island had revealed what lay beneath their civilized surfaces. And now there was no going back.
Feature Photo by Ingo Joseph
The Confusing Middle 