ENTRY 1: The Crash
Day 0/ Marie

There were 184 passengers aboard the Airborne Airlines. Only 23 of us survived. I wish I could recount the crash for whoever is reading this, but I was asleep right up until my brother shook me awake and pulled my oxygen mask over my face. Then... well, then a piece of the wing came off, a thin piece of metal was suddenly inside of the plane.

One second, my brother was looking at me with those concerned eyes of his, and the next second, there was a long piece of metal sticking through window, through his face and out the back of his chair. Then we crashed into the ocean, and a few of us swam to shore.

Some people responded immediately by pulling people from the wreckage and treating their wounds. There was one man in particular who worked so fast, so surgically, that it was almost mesmerizing watching him bring people back from the brink of death.

Most of us just stood around or sat in shock. One person even wandered off into the woods.

I wish I had helped, or at least tried to get some people out of the wreckage. I'm a good swimmer, but I was just too stunned over watching my brother... I'm not even sure how I made it ashore.

I... I don't know why I'm even writing this. My hands are so shaky and numb.

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ENTRY 2: Maurice
Day 0/ Marie
right after the crash

They had the bodies laid out in a row along the beach. Wounded and dead alike splayed out in an orderly, if not rushed, manner. The ocean breeze hit the nostrils just before the stench of burning metal and death overpowered it. The plane finally sank below the surface of the ocean as most of us sat there in shock.

In the presence of panic and pain, one man was a becon of activity. A black man named Maurice Jackson tended to the wounded. He has a salt and pepper beard and a build that seemed retired from hard labor, but still plenty capable if it needed to be. It was hard to tell which was more impressive, the speed of his hands, or the size of his voice.

The wounded screamed out for help as he made his way to each and every one of them, in turn. He started with the worst one, though: a woman with a gut wound and third-degree burns across her face. She would alternate between screaming, moaning, and crying. The noises were soft when I landed on the beach, but almost as soon as the man had her bandaged, the noises stopped.

For a fraction of a second, the failure and grief washed over Maurice stronger than seemed possible, stronger even maybe than my own grief, but then he was moving again. It happened so fast that I think I'm the only one who noticed the change in his demeanor.

His second patient had his leg broken almost evenly in the middle of the shin. It was only held on by small piece of skin.

The first thing he did for the man was strap a turnakit just above the knee and tighten it to cut off the blood flow. The second, third, and fourth things he did involved a fifth of whiskey. Maurice let the man drink to just past the shoulders of the bottle, but then cut the man off (enough to thin the pain, but not the blood), then Muarice took a swig worth a few shots to steady his own nerves, and poured another dose on the man's open leg.

With a pair of surgical scissors, Muarice cut the skin, connecting the bottom half of the man's shin to the top half. He all but threw the man's foot to the side.

Things seemed almost done and dusted for the young amputee, but Muarice had a deep set scowl on his face.

"All right, kid, you're stable. You're good, and you're going to be just fine. I'll be back to clean you up once I take care of a few more people."

Muarice set about splinting a couple more broken bones and bandaging some less severe wounds. He did come back to the amputated guy, but 'clean up' was an understatement.

He used tweezers to pull several bone shards out of the man's stub. This must have been the reason Muarice had been frowning because it took a half hour, and he had enough bone shards to fill a bowl. He finished with another round of whiskey for everyone involved; himself, the aputee (Kalvin), and Kalvin's leg. Then he smoothed out some excess skin flaps out over the exposed muscle, just to close the wound and make it look pretty.

All in all, I don't know what to expect now. We have some very capable hands with us, but this island is getting stranger by the minute. Hopefully, someone will come for us soon.

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ENTRY 3: Foreign Fauna
Day 2/ Marie

We set about scouting the island today. Mostly, we collected wood. Wood for fires, wood for shelters, wood for spears, bows, arrows. A special piece of wood so Muarice can make a prosthetic leg for Kalvin. We also collected leaves. Leaves for kindling campfires, smoke producing leaves for the signal fire (a giant burnable S.O.S. built just behind the high tide line), leaves to catch rainwater, leaves for shelters, and we were supposed to find leaves for medicine and for eating. This is where things get a little strange.

Blain, the twig of an active-duty Army Ranger who is responsible for most of our stick and leaf related adventures, has yet to recognize any of the plants aside from poison oak. You could say that maybe he doesn't know the specifics, but I can't recognize any either. Although being a marine biologist does not mean I should recognize land fuana, I normally would.

No, Blain clearly knows what he's doing. Between him and Muarice, we should be home and healthy in no time. It's just that strangeness seems to be popping up everywhere we turn.

While we were out looking for fruits, vegetables, and leaves to eat, I thought I saw a sort of cucumber or eggplant. When I went to pick the green-blue fruit, the plant retracted though. Not the fruit, but the whole plant. Stem and leaves joined the roots underground, and the plant took off, burrowing through the jungle like a groundhog.

I waved at Blain but quickly told him 'nevermind'. There's no way I saw what I think I did, and he wouldn't believe me if I didn't believe myself. About an hour later, though, we both saw something like a rabbit staring at us from the middle of the trail, unafraid and curious. I say 'something like' a rabbit because this rabbit was bald from the chest up. It had a furry bottom, but the top half was painted bright red and purple, like the colors of a poisonous frog. Even its ears had an amphibious texture. It did that cute thing where rabbits scrunch up one side of their nose, which is also their mouth and partly their cheek. Except... it wasn't very cute without fur. It's as if we watched its face split in half to show its teeth before hacking up a blue lugie that burned away at the ground. Then it hopped away.

The last thing of note was something Blain found. A fruit on a tree marked with a large red X. Blain was frozen in place and staring at the tree when he beckoned me to come over. He was standing there holding what looked like an apple. I immediately slapped his arm and sent the apple rolling over the roots.

"I wasn't going to eat it!" He said defensively. I rolled his arm so that his palm was facing up towards us. In the center of his palm and around the tips of his fingers were bright red, throbbing lesions.

"Natives on islands with Manchineel trees mark them with X's."

He did have a look of something dawning on him, but the nerd in me doubted he knew what I was talking about, "smoke from the burning wood alone will cause temporary blindness-"

"Marie! You're brilliant, it's so obvious!"

"Well, I don't think many people would say knowledge of the Death Apple tree is obvious, but I'll take the compliment."

"Natives, Marie! Natives! Someone had to draw the X!"

It was obvious. I guess the dehydration was dulling our thought process, but still... people! I can't believe it. If we make it far enough inland, we might as well be saved.

If our situation was any different, I would be geeking out about how much of a scientific marvel this island is, but our lives are at stake. Poisonous creatures and plantlife are not going to help us survive, but other people will at least know how to survive, if not help us do so.

When we do make it off of this island, though, I'm coming back with a team. Maybe I can do my brother justice if I make this trek worthwhile.