Steel Islands
This is an assignment I had to do for my English class. We had to read Lord of the Flies, which is the BEST FREAKING BOOK EVER, and write a sequel to it!!!! We also had to do all these totally awesome worksheets that were incredibly repetitive and boring and totally pointless and I loved every minute of it.
*end sarcasm alert*
Okay, reality. This is the WORST FREAKING BOOK EVER. If you never read Lord of the Flies, good for you. If you have...well...you know what I'm talking about. But I did enjoy writing this little sequel. You'll see why.
Chapter 1
The lifeboat eased calmly through the crystal blue water, with barely any waves disturbing its slow, consistent progress. Its occupants, however, were wound tighter than the tensest bowstring.
Ralph, sitting without sound at the rear of the boat, gazed intensely at the approaching cruiser. His tired, frazzled brain refused to take in the fact that was now facing him: they really were being rescued! Somehow, however, the knowledge no longer filled him with hope and joy. Rather, exhaustion and a lingering fear had settled into his sweaty, injured body. He glanced down at his ribs, where the ugly bruise from Jack’s spear still throbbed. In the past several hours, he’d all but forgotten the sensation of pain. Now that he had the time to think instead of running for his life, however, the beaten pain signals creeped their way up to his brain. The boy was sore, bewildered, and almost in a state of shock.
To take his mind off his own troubles, he glanced at the other people of the lifeboat. One was the officer who’d he’d almost crashed into as he’d stumbled and rolled for his life out of the burning jungle. The officer seemed to notice Ralph’s gaze and nodded to him, giving the boy a hopefully cheery smile. Ralph could barely get his mouth to reply. So he instead turned to look at the others. Little Percival was clinging to the wooden sides, watching the azure water, while Roger picked at a scrape on his hand, something he’d picked up from crashing through the bushes in search of Ralph’s blood. His face was expressionless, as usual. Another littleun (Ralph believed his name was Henry) fixed his eyes on the shimmering silver ship. A couple other boats, filled with boys and an officer for each boat, coasted through the water. Meanwhile, Jack sat at the opposite end of the boat, next to the officer. A very uncomfortable position.
Jack, absurd and tattered black choir cap still clinging to his red hair, stared at the water, hands clenched into fists. Perspiration was running down his face, creating lines in the black and green paint. The former hunter ignored everyone else and continued his dark dreams. For the first time in a while, Jack was terrified. He’d been confronted with authority, a real authority, one that he dared not challenge. Some faint and lingering sense of civilization that had been buried under pig’s blood and paint emerged at the sight of an adult. And if said adult found out what had happened on the island…what Jack had done…what he’d tried to do those last few hours…
He didn’t want to think about it. He’d have to figure out some way to put the blame on Ralph. Besides, what’d happened…it wasn’t really his fault! That thing with Simon…but that wasn’t Simon! It was the beast! And Piggy had died because he’d been stupid and gotten in the way! It was their fault, not Jack’s! Jack had been acting entirely out of self-preservation!
Right?
Ralph’s blond, overlong hair flapped in the newly arisen sea breeze, which gently tossed the boat towards the cruiser. Soon, they were along the side of the boat, which loomed above them like a mountain, only without a signal fire at the peak. A rope ladder descended down the side, and the officer in Ralph’s boat boosted them up one by one. Finally, it was Ralph’s turn, with Jack having gone just ahead of him. As he scrambled up the ladder, he felt one of the ropes slacken slightly. He glanced up.
Jack, a malicious grin on his face, was inconspicuously sawing away at one of the sides with his pocketknife, which he’d hidden in the ragged remains of his shorts. The boy cut faster when he felt Ralph’s frightened eye on him. Within seconds, before the sailors had time to notice, a single thread remained, connecting the two halves of the rope ladder. Ralph’s throat refused to function; he could not scream or speak, only watch as the last thread snapped. The ladder swung sideways violently and he lost his grip.
Down he tumbled into the crystal water, which embraced him like a mother. He swam to the surface and bobbed helplessly, watching Jack scramble up the broken ladder, one side of which now dangled in the faint sea breeze. Was this how Ralph would end, inches away from freedom, still trying to clutch the steel sides?
A shout echoed from the deck as the crew noticed the ruined ladder. Their faces peered over the edge and saw Ralph floating in the water below. Within a minute, a second ladder was lowered, and Ralph’s dripping fingers grasped it in a vice. For the second time, he climbed until he was heaved onto the deck, pools of water collecting around his blistered feet. The officer who’d first landed on the island walked swiftly up to him.
“All right there?” the adult asked, buttons on his jacket flashing in the harsh sunlight.
“Y…yeah…” Ralph replied sluggishly, a blanket of weariness enveloping him. With a faint moan, he stumbled and pitched forward onto the deck.
The last thing he saw before the world was covered in shadow was Jack’s furious and disappointed face.
Chapter 2
Why didn’t he feel the usual itching of the sandy palm leaves or hear the sea-driven wind coast through the treetops? Where was the crying of the littleuns or the harsh smell of seawater?
And why was he still alive?
With a jerk, Ralph sat up in bed, bewildered and afraid. For a moment, terror gripped him as he imagined he was still being hunted. Where am I? Why did I fall asleep?
“’Bout time you woke up,” a sneering voice spoke, familiar hatred seeping through the mocking words. Frantic, Ralph spun around, looking for a place to hide in case a group of spear-wielding savages was advancing on his position.
Instead, he saw dull gray walls surrounding him. He was lying on a bunk in a small room with several other beds along the sides. And standing not four feet from him was Jack, red hair cleaner than it had been in days, dressed in an oversized shirt with the remains of his shorts still clinging to his waist. He was barefoot and had a twisted look on his face. “Why can’t you just die?” he spat. “You’re always trying to ruin my fun!”
“And where did that fun get us?” Ralph retorted furiously, the hate and fury from yesterday (or was it two days ago?) rising in his chest. “You tried to kill me and you killed Simon and you killed Piggy! Is that supposed to be fun, you fool?!”
Jack’s face flushed a deep scarlet and his fists clenched. But before he could commit violence, a crew member came in. He was about thirty-five or so, with mussed black hair and deep blue eyes. Wearing medical garb, he marched into the room and headed straight toward Ralph, who stared back into his eyes with a question forming in his mind. He looked a bit…familiar…like Ralph had seen his face distorted in a deformed mirror. Without bestowing a glance on Jack, he bent down next to Ralph’s bed.
“Hello, I’m Doctor Adams. I’ve been assigned to take care of you. How are you feeling?” Ralph stared. When was the last time anyone had really shown any concern for his health?
“Okay…I guess,” he said slowly.
“Mmhm. Well, sit up and let me give you a quick once-over.” As Ralph lifted himself from his bed, the doctor listened to his heart with the stethoscope and did all the usual doctor functions. Except for the ugly spear wound on his ribs and general exhaustion and dehydration, Ralph was alright. Soon, his rib injury was bandaged, and the boy slowly climbed out of bed. Jack had sat on another bunk and watched the whole thing in silence. As soon as Dr. Adams was finished, the former hunter spoke up.
“How long is that gonna take to heal?” And he pointed at Ralph’s spear wound.
Dr. Adams cocked his head slightly. “Oh…I’d say a few days, maybe a week. In the meantime,” he continued, speaking to Ralph, “you need to get plenty of rest and food. We should be landing on Cruse Island soon. It’s our home base,” he said in response to Ralph’s confused look. And without another word, he walked out the door.
Jack turned to Ralph. “You’re weak and lame. So you’ve got your own doctor? Big deal. I’m still better than you.” And he marched out the door, leaving Ralph to worry. What was Jack planning now?
He found out the answer very quickly.
That afternoon, when he’d found his way to the mess hall (he’d been forced to ask a sailor for directions), he discovered a familiar sight. Jack, seated at the head of one table, was surrounded by some of the sailors. Apparently, he was regaling them with harrowing (and completely false) stories of his exploits on the island. The setting and the food was completely different, but Jack’s spinning and self-promotion was exactly the same as on the island.
“And then I chucked the spear at the boar. For a sec, I thought it was gonna impale me. As it is, I barely escaped with my arm. But then, with a final squeal, the boar died and it fed everyone for a good two days. Best hunt yet!” He caught Ralph’s furious blue eye and gave a sly wink. It plainly said to Ralph, I’m in charge here, not you, so go crawl back into your hole.
Anger washed over Ralph and he plunked himself down at a table, wincing as he jostled the bandages underneath his new shirt. Alone he sat, tearing into his meal without giving any thought to what he was eating. But then a voice broke through his eating.
“Don’t you know how to use a fork?”
Ralph jerked and turned around swiftly. Doctor Adams was standing there with his own serving of food. He had a rather revolted look on his face. Ralph looked at his hands; food was dripping from his fingers and a smear of some semi-edible substance marred his cheek. So what?
Adams set his tray down, seized a napkin, and scrubbed Ralph’s face and hands. “Fork, kid! You’re a human being, not an animal.”
Ralph hung his head. If only the adult knew. Jack’s mocking laugh echoed from his table, followed by the chuckles of the sailors.
Thankfully, however, two identical voices broke in on Ralph’s humiliation.
“Ralph!”
“We were awfully…”
“…worried about you and…”
“…nobody’d tell us where…”
“…you were and all!”
A faint smile creeping onto his lips, Ralph raised his head. Samneric. Brilliant timing, as was their specialty. They sat down with him, glancing unpleasantly at Jack and his fan club. Ralph was beyond delighted to see them alive. Still…as Doctor Adams moved away, satisfied that Ralph remembered how to use utensils, the boy’s expression shut down and he was silent.
Samneric watched him with ashamed expressions. “Um…Ralph?” Sam asked hesitantly?
“You…you aren’t still…you know…”
“…mad at us for…um…”
“…joining Jack’s tribe, are you?”
Ralph didn’t bother to answer.
Chapter 3
Ralph stared in disbelief as the broken body of Piggy fell past him, crashing and shattering into a million pieces on the rocks below. A boy’s demented, shrieking laughter surrounded him and drowned out the sound of the waves. Swirls of paint changed the crystal of the ocean around the island to a mixture of black, green, and red. And all the while, screeching voices called, “Kill the boy!”
“Cut his throat!”
“SPILL HIS BLOOD!”
“KILL THE BOY!!!”
“AAAAAHHHHH!!!” Ralph screamed, launching himself out of his hard bunk. The lurching of the cruiser jerked him back to reality.
“Shut up!” Jack growled from his bunk. “Shut up, you baby!”
Ralph lay back down and felt a tear squeeze out from behind his eyelids and soak onto his hard pillow.
“Cruse Island!” a sailor called as he stood with his weathered hands on the hot rail, staring at the horizon. Sure enough, a landmass was looming up ahead, all grays and browns. It was a far cry from the tropical quote-unquote “paradise” where the boys had lived and died for so long. Ralph, fingers going through his freshly-cut hair, shielded his eyes with his palm. Doctor Adams stood beside him, an unreadable expression on his face.
Farther down the ship, Roger was standing next to one of the cruiser’s guns, fingers running over the metals. Jack had planted himself next to one of the officers and was gaily describing more of his falsehoods that glorified him as the best person on the planet. To Ralph’s amusement and Jack’s frustration, the officer did not seem to care very much for Jack’s prattling, and soon the adult moved away to speak with a couple other sailors. Jack gave Ralph a venomous look, which did not escape Adams.
“You alright?” the doctor asked Ralph, whose gaze returned to the approaching island.
“I…yes.”
Adams narrowed his eyes. “Ralph, when we’re landed and have some spare time, I need to talk to you. I want to find out what exactly happened on the island that you boys were trapped on. You’ve been looking haunted ever since we picked you up, and I’ve heard some of the younger boys crying constantly in their sleep. There’s something wrong with the lot of you, and as the chief physician, I need to know what that is.”
Ralph avoided the man’s intense gaze, but something made him look up again. No doubt about it this time, Adams did look like someone Ralph had seen before. But he just couldn’t figure out who that person was.
After a couple hours in which orders were shouted and the children scurried around the deck before being herded back to their cabins, the cruiser finally landed in the islands natural harbor. Quickly, the sailors marched down to the waiting beach with the officer who’d first found the boys, Officer Pattrel, in front. Some of the littleuns crowded around the ship’s railings, peering in excitement at the new beaches and the dozens of people striding up and down the sand.
Soon, Pattrel came back up to the boys who gathered around the deck. “I’ve spoken to my superiors, and they’ve agreed that you’re going to stay here for a bit until we can spare the men and boats to take you home. We’re in the middle of a war at the moment, but as soon as we can, we’ll get you boys home, alright?”
If he was expecting a cry of joy and a round of applause, he did not get it.
The boys filed off the boat in two raggedy, cumbersome lines, one composed of the littleuns, who peered around them curiously, and the other composed of the older boys, who gave few signs of reaction to their new situation. Two officers led them across the beach and down a path marked by heavy ruts and many, many footprints. Several minutes passed as they marched through the approaching jungle, the heavy heat smothering any attempts to talk. At last, the group reached a large, steel building that sprung out of the trees like an animal waiting for its prey. This was the island’s main base where all the soldiers and sailors were stationed when not fighting.
Officer Pattrel, who was at the head of the line, took the boys inside, where the faint waves of cooler air dried some of the sweat off their foreheads. Through several corridors they went, finally ending up in a single large room. Dozens of hard bunks lined the walls, with small chests at the foot of each bed for personal belongings. Some of the littleuns immediately took to their beds in glee, flopping onto the stiff blankets and small pillows. Officer Pattrel glanced at the remaining children.
“I’ve got to go and write my reports, so all of you stay here. This’ll be your room until we can spare the ship and men to take you lot home. Someone will come get you when it’s mealtime. Don’t kill each other!” And then he was gone, laughing at his own joke.
Ralph perched on the end of his bed, while Samneric sat on two bunks nearby. Further down the end, near the back wall, Jack flopped onto the hard covers, while Roger reclined on one near the entrance. Noticeably, all the littleuns were on one side, while the biguns were on the other. The group was still quite split in that regard. And in other ways as well.
That night, as Ralph stumbled into the room, bleary-eyed from poor sleeping, something hard stretched across his ankle and sent him tumbling to the floor. As he pushed himself off the cold ground, stomach aching from the impact, he heard a derisive giggle to his left and near the back of the room. With a glare into the darkness, he found his bed and crawled into it, anger seeping through his veins.
Jack and Roger were still after him. Would he never have peace?
Chapter 4
The days dragged on; every single day, Jack and Roger would try to find some way to humiliate Ralph. Thankfully, however, a couple sympathetic sailors noticed this, and Doctor Adams had the habit of popping up when things were getting overly out of hand. One day, after the doctor shooed off the two troublemakers, he took Ralph by the shoulder and led him to a small room that appeared to function as a classroom. Sitting the boy down, the adult drew up a chair and looked Ralph in the face.
“It’s time for you to tell me what happened on the island. And before you start protesting,” he added as Ralph gave him a horrified look, “this is important. As the chief physician, I have to know what occurred. So please start from the beginning.”
Ralph hesitated and swallowed. Sweat started breaking out on his forehead. Where to begin?
At the beginning, of course. With the first day on the beach. Closing his eyes, he started to talk.
Doctor Adams did not interrupt until Ralph described Simon. Then the man stiffened, perplexity flooding his face as he stared. “Simon? Black hair and part of the choir? And with a tendency to faint? Oh no…” The doctor put his head in his hands. “Simon…and he’s not here now. I would have recognized him instantly. He’s my nephew.”
Ralph’s surprise could not be expressed in words. A hard block of nervousness dropped into his stomach when he realized what he would have to tell the uncle of the boy who’d been brutally murdered.
He kept talking. Slowly and painfully, the experiences on the island were revealed, while Ralph dredged up those feelings of frustration, helplessness, and terror that had made up his life on that wretched place. As he spoke, Doctor Adams’s face changed, sometimes frozen in horror, other times furious. And then Ralph got to the stormy night…
When the boy described the excruciating memories, he was surprised to find tears dripping down his face. As he looked up, he saw the same thing happening to Adams. Suddenly, without warning, the doctor stood up and walked out of the room, leaving Ralph to his misery. Eventually, the boy rose and wandered his way back to the children’s room, where he laid on his bed and felt wetness soak into his pillow.
The next morning, Ralph saw no sign of Doctor Adams, and he tried to keep as low a profile as possible. But his plans at remaining unnoticed were foiled when a load roar sounded overhead. Alarms blared through the building, sending red lights dancing on the walls like tiny blots of blood.
“KIDS! GET BACK TO YOUR ROOM AND DON’T GO OUT!!” one of the officers shouted as some of the littleuns began to panic and cry. With an effort, the group succeeded in making it to their bunks, where they huddled in the center of the room, away from the walls that seemed to close in on them.
“What’s happening?” Maurice asked.
“Bomb raid or something,” Jack replied condescendingly. “This island gets attacked sometimes by the enemy. Wish I could help out,” he trailed off wistfully, watching the door.
Shouts of frustration and anger echoed up and down the hallway, while the pounding of heavy boots and the blaring of the alarm drowned out all other noise. Except for the roars of the planes. And then it came. A shattering, ear-splitting blast that wrenched the boys to the ground as the whole world seemed to shake. Outside, in the hallway, a wall suddenly exploded, sending fragments of twisted metal and earth hurtling inside the room and into the other walls. In the midst of the debris, a single broken body of a sailor lay. Ralph turned, quaking in fear, to the other boys, and noticed something.
Jack’s eyes were lit with a combination of fury and excitement. And before anyone could stop him, the former hunter darted out the door and into the trees outside. He ran, screeching at the planes above, hurling profanities and threats. Although the other boys called his name, they did not dare go outside in the danger zone. So nobody was near him when Jack’s fate befell him.
A bomb fell through the sky, whistling as it tore downwards, spiraling until it landed right in the trees near where Jack was standing. With a deafening explosion, it incinerated nearby trees and ripped another hole in the building. As the dust settled and cleared, the boys peeped out cautiously from their huddle, terrified at what they might see.
Jack’s mangled body lay there in the dust, amidst debris and flames.
There was no time to mourn or cry or react at all. As more of the planes growled and snarled overhead, another whistling bomb flew toward the roof, right above the boys’ room. The last thing Ralph thought before the flames and crumbling metal engulfed his body was, “I wonder what Piggy would say…”
Tanya slammed the book shut, frustration and annoyance washing over her. “Well, what was the point of THAT?” she spat, turning to her best friend Caroline.
Caroline looked at Tanya curiously as she put down her crime fiction novel. “Point of what?”
“THIS!” Tanya replied, stabbing a finger at the book cover. “Everyone died! Nobody was rescued! What was the point in even getting them off the island if they were just gonna be blown up?!”
Her friend shrugged. “I dunno. To teach that life is futile?”
Tanya blinked. “But if I wanted to know that, I would’ve read an obituary!”
Caroline laughed softly and lifted her crime fiction back up. “It’ll help you gain knowledge and understanding of the world around you! Or at least teach you to…um…actually, I’m running out of encouraging things to say.”
With a snort, Tanya stuffed the book into her backpack and pulled out some paper and a pencil. “Oh well...Maybe the next class assignment we get will be interesting.”
“Actually, I heard that next we’re reading a book about rabbits in Australia.”
“WHAT?!”
“My reaction.”
The End
P.S. Funny bit of trivia. I got an A on this. Somehow, I doubt my teacher actually read it. If she had...methinks she would have burned it and flushed it down the toliet, then come after me with a pitchfork for saying that I hated the book. Good thing she was lazy.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.