The company that had hired her had said that her trip to New Zealand would be one she would not soon forget.

She had not dared to imagine just how right they would turn out to be.

The Island

The front of the plane, the cockpit, was nowhere to be seen. The rest of it had been divided into several parts, as if it had been sliced with a giant knife and then torn and twisted apart.

Two parts of the plane were lying close to each other, like two huge pipes, and the tail of it was a couple hundred meters east of them.

Seats, suitcases, backpacks, limbs and bodies were scattered all over the beach. Some of it had landed in the ocean and was brought closer to shore by the waves that kept rolling in towards the beach, and then back again.

Uta Refson

She blinked open her brown eyes to see nothing. Almost total darkness surrounded her, with the sole exception of a small tubular ray of light shining up at her from her feet. If Uta moved just right she could almost get the light to shine on her face. The problem was, though, she couldn’t move at all.

The shock of the plane crash was starting to wear off just in time for the shock of her latest predicament to take hold. A massive amount of weight was crushing down on her from seemingly all sides. And the heat was nearly unbearable. The little light there was started to go hazy with smoke. Fire! She tried to move but nothing would budge. Uta was starting to grow frantic, thrashing around, wincing from pain and the unnatural angle her right foot was turned. I’m going to die…

But wait.

Muffled voices started to carry into the small, confined space. Uta’s dirt and blood stained face perked up. "HELP!" She called, but knew that if their voices were muffled then hers would be too. Alright, Refson, calm down and think. Uta could remember going down to the baggage hold for a passenger’s pills that were mistakenly checked at the airport. Always the flight attendant awarded with Service Excellence awards, this seemed like a small task. Small…until the explosion at least.