Prologue: The sandal

Simon wakes up as he is about to drown. Can he save himself? Will he regret it?

I wake up drowning.
This first thing I think of for an instant of a second is the cold water, tickling my neck. The second is the water greeting my face, my hands slipping helplessly away from my life ring. My trainers and jeans, my coat weighing me down, slowing me as I try to kick back to the surface. Kicking in vain as I sink and sink.
I reach down to my trainers, trying not to see the black below me, the endless sea below. My fingers slip in the panic.
My lungs are starting to hurt. The air in my throat is being exhausted - I didn't breathe before I went under the water. I needed precious breath...
I wrench one trainer off. My white nike trainer sinks gently into the depths.
I throw off my coat, wrenching my hands out of the clinging, thick sleeves.

I kick for my life.
Salt water doesn't sting your eyes below the water. But as I burst the surface, gasp desperately, hungry for air, I howl in pain as the air runs like a cheese grater across my pupils. I sink below the water, but this time I am straight back up again, taking another long deep breath.
Air never got me so high.
I swim after my life ring, trying to retrieve it. My remaining trainer still drags me back, and my jeans don't help. But the water is barely choppy. I almost gag on the overpowering taste of salt, but I swim onwards.

I'm not ashamed to say I kiss that life ring when i got to it. Then I just laugh.
The sea is strangely warm. The sun is suddenly shining - I guess I hadn't noticed it when I was being pulled to the bottom of the ocean by my own clothes. Strange that.
Then something strange happens.

A thunderous bang rings through my head. I see debris shoot into the sky - I see smoke billow upwards. I swear I can almost feel the vein shredding shockwave.
I swim in that direction. The water suddenly rises, and I clench my eyes shut as water washes over my head.
The water, and not my tame paddling is carrying me, throwing me across the ocean. But I'm lucky. The water carries me toward the shore.
All of a sudden like a horizon that had just been created the beach appears above the sloshing waves, which carry me toward the sand.
The water lapped against a giant black husk on the beach, burning from within. A tail and two wings blackening.
It was a plane.

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Eventually, I walk out of the sea onto the beach.
The plane's roof is ripped open, the debris scattered all over the beach. I step over black and white wreckage - the last thing I need is a cut, an injury. I need something to cover my right foot, the foot I have just ripped a trainer off to save my life. Dieing from saving my own life - that wouldn't be clever.
I find a pale green sandal, half buried in the salty grains of the beach. I wonder who it belongs to...
A stupid thought occurs to me as I pull on the sandal.
'HELLO?'
My voice is muffled by the sea, whoosing up and down the beachline. No-one answers. Where is everyone? This plane is burning and there isn't a single person here.
My next thought is there isn't a single live person here.
I shuffle over to the plane. I have to clench the toes on my right foot to keep the sandal on - I end up almost limping toward a massive cavity in the planes side.
I suddenly notice that the wheels of this dead monster were gone.

So was the foam from the plane seats.

Small fires burn. I use my shirt and put them out. My shirt aquires small, black holes in it for my trouble. It was a hawaian shirt, so I'm not too troubled.
I realise that there would be food on this plane. Food...and drink.
My salt saturated mouth doesn't drool. But it does cry out for nourishment.
I walk down the middle of the empty plane. I see the cart, where they keep the food...The iced bottles...
I open one draw to find it empty. Then another. Then another.
Then another.
All of the draw's are empty.
I can't remember if I cry out in frustration or not. But I know that my stomach does twist, into a tight little bundle while I turn my head upward at the roof that is no longer there.

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For a while, I sit on the beach, watching the waves.
For a few brief seconds, I considered scrawling a HELP in the beach, using the debris from the plane. I then figured that if the rescue services didn't see a blackened wreck of a plane on the beach, they wouldn't see anything I tried to create.
So here I am, sitting watching the waves. Behind me, the beach becomes a steep hill, which presumably runs up to a ridge. I am not so sure I want to go up there.
There were plenty of questions that I don't know the answer to.
What happened to the plane?
What happened to the passengers?
What happened to the insides?
And many more folks. And many more.
Therefore I am afraid to go up onto that ridge because I dont know whats on the other side. How stupid. Like a child afraid of the dark I am. But still...
Every so often I glance up to the ridge. Meanwhile, the sun is at it's zenith. It has cooked away the water, and now it is cooking my skin. In a moment of sheer madness I wonder how god likes his meat. Wheather he likes it with the blood still dripping.

I have to go up that ridge.
I have no food, and no water thanks to the bar stewards who ripped the inside of that plane apart (and blew it up...) I have no shelter. I have no phone - I really regret leaving my jacket in the sea now - My hindsightful mind insists I could have repaired the phone that was in it's pocket. My reason says no, and says even if I could, this doesn't look like any mobile hotspot I've ever seen.
But the hindsighted mind is persistent.
I have to go up the ridge.
I stand up, and turn. My mouth is so dry...I need food. I need something...
I need to call Neil and Daniel. I need to tell them I was alright.
There is probably a civilisation over that ridge anyway, I think as I begin the descent. An English embassy. A nice hotel which will serve me cocktails as I wait for the arrangements to get me home. Suddenly that didn't seem like such a bad place to be.
The gradient increases. I'm using my hands to dig into the sand, pulling myself up there. I keep thinking about a strawberry cocktail...a swimming pool. This doesn't seem like the worst place in the world to have a tourist resort.
I'm metres away from the top, and then I'm thinking what if this is a pirate island, where half dressed men with AK-47's walk around fires and hang hostages by the ankles? What if? What if?
Finally, my lungs without a doubt rusting and shrivelled by now, I reach the top.
This time, I do cry out. Very loud. A scream of despair. There is my dream resort, and then there is pirate hole, and then there is so much worse.

The landscape, is nothing but hills of wreckage, valleys of scrap and ruin.
Below my feet, there is fencing that leads downward into the chaos. Then there are burnt out cars, there are pipes and fencing, there are bricks and tracks of human waste that I don't even know of.
This mess...this massive, never ending scraphead, stretches far into the distance. It is like a grotesque parody of the grand canyon.
I sink to my knees. A tiny part of me is in awe. Most of me is just lost for ideas. This is nothingness. This is wasteland. I will die here. 
I will die here. 
On two sides, I face oblivion. One, the ocean. Another, this maze of filth, and probably disease.
It's then that I think I see something. Something in the distance that just couldn't be there.
But I look again.
On the towering hills in the distance, I am sure I can see a wind turbine. Something is certainly flapping out there. As the wind ruffles my hair, I realise that the propellor like wings are going with the breeze...spinning far too quickly...

My next move is insane.
I start to climb down the linked fencing below me. Down into the wreckage, the scrap, the carnage.
I'm glad I have my trainer and sandal on.