I woke up with my head still outside the tent, and heard a few birds chirping. More birds joined in. Their calls were so unique, like something i had never heard before. More and more birds continued contributing their calls to the symphony, and it got louder and louder. Then the noise got too loud. It still climbed in volume, until it was deafening. I zipped the tent closed to filter out some of the sound, but it was still deafening. Asser and Ben woke up to the dawn chorus, and quickly clamped their ears with their hands. I saw Ben's mouth moving but couldn't hear him above the ruckus. I don't know how but Marek was still asleep.
Half an hour had passed since the dawn chorus had started, and now we could hear each other if we shouted. It continued to get quieter and quieter until there were just a few birds singing. I opened the tent and walked out with the survival blanket wrapped around me. It was a bit windy. Asser and Ben walked out of the tent, and I could see that Marek was just awaking.
"Mornin' my boys. Any food left?"
"No. We need to find a tree with fruit or catch something and eat it." Ben sat down thinking, probably about getting food and probably because he was very hungry.
"We could hunt something" Marek suggested. I've got a hunting knife in my bag" He opened his backpack and pulled out a sharp knife.
"What are you planning on hunting?" I retorted, "there's probably only birds on this island. "
"Look over there!" Asser pointed at the treeline, and we all saw a small Moa. It was about 5 foot tall. Marek leaped out of the tent and ran at the Moa with the knife. It was to nimble and quick for him, and it fled into the forest. "Great. now what!?" Marek threw his knife on the ground in frustration.
"We can still get it" Ben rebutted. "We just need to think smarter. Look! there it is, behind those trees. Try sneaking up on it. Use stealth." Marek picked up his hunting knife, then crept a few metres along the tree line. He went behind the first tree, then slowly moved towards the Moa in a low stance. Me Asser and Ben watched him as he got a few feet away from the Moa. He then lunged at the thought-to-be extinct creature, but it was still to quick for him. It dodged his stab and fled deeper into the forest. Marek ccame out of the bush into the beach, shouting profanities at the air. "What if we tried attack it from long range, maybe with a spear?" Ben suggested.
Marek ran off and climbed up a tree, snapping off an elegantly straight branch, He ran back to the tent with the stick and hunting knife. Marek was fiddling around in the tent, then came out with a spear cheaply made spear put together from the branch, his hunting knife, and some nylon string to bound them together. He waited until he could see the Moa from the beach. He then launched his home made spear through the air. It flailed in the air, and hit the ground with its blunt end, missing the Moa completely.
"We've tried everything!" Marek complained. "We'll just starve to death. Stupid field trip"
"We haven't tried everything. What if we surrounded it so then it would have nowhere to run to." I suggested.
"One more try, then we call it quits and starve to death" Marek agreed.
We better catch it. I'm hungry as" Ben droned on. Asser didn't want to help kill it, so me, Marek and Ben took up positions surrounding the Moa in a triangle. We closed the gap around the Moa. It suddenly bolted, then Marek and Ben moved towards each other making a wall. The Moa halted and and tried to turn around, but I ran at it before it could and took out its legs. Ben helped me hold it down as it wriggled around like a fire hose. Marek stabbed it multiple times, even though it was long dead before he finished. I turned my heads toward the beach and saw Asser tending to a fire. "Help me carry this thing to the fire" Marek requested.
We were lucky enough to have Marek with us, because he had the skills to pluck the Moa, skin it, and gut it. It was quite gruesome, but food was food. He drove his spear through meat and spit roasted it through the fire. "I can't believe we caught a Moa" proclaimed Ben, with a proud look on his face. We all sat around the fire, and Asser came out of the tent with something in his hand. "We better get moving and find some of the others, if they're still alive. But first we need to find out where we are. Help me out here" Asser put a map down on the sand, and I examined it carefully with him like two archaeologists. Looking towards the treleine from the beach i could see a large mountain covered in forrest on the left hand side. On the map there were three mountains, two of them larger than the other. One of the larger ones was right next to the small mountan, and from our view, We could only see one. So we figured out that we were on one of the beaches on the side of mountain, but we weren't sure wich. One was a sort of a straight line, and the other one was like a bay. From where we were we had a lovely view, and the land curved in like a bay, so we fiured out we were on the bay by the lone mountain.
"Ok, we know where we are." Asser Remarked, "We should go to this beach on the other side of the mountain. There might be other people there."
"True. Should we go around the mountain or through the forrest?"I questioned Asser, they were both dangerous paths."
"Well the bush probably has no track to the beach and we cold get attacked by a Moa or giant bird. If we go around the mountain it could be rocky and narrow at some points, but we could find stuff that washed up on the cliffs. So we should go around the mountain."
"Alright. What you said." I was amazed by Asser's thinking, he wasn't usually like this in class. But this is something totally different to class.
After we gobbled down our Moa we packed up the tent and all the gear. Asser instructed what our plans were for the day.
On the way around the mountain, down a short rocky cliff, there were two bags. "Look!" I shouted.
"Sweet, some bags" Marek said. He carefully lifted them to ground level with his budget spear he had quickly reassembled.
"Oh my lord, it my bag!" While I was celebrating the discovery of my backpack, Ben was celebrating his afterMarek lifted up the second one. Luckily we had both wrapped all our gear in plastic so it was still dry, and there was some lunch. We also had some cooked Moa left over that Asser was carrying.
When we got to the beach, we were hungry again. Asser grabbed his flint and whipped up another fire. He got a metal bucket from one of the bags, and filled it up with salt water from the ocean and started boiling it so that when it was cool we would be able to drink it. We had some Moa and and some of the food from Me and Ben's lunch boxes that hadn't gone rotten. After our late lunch we still had enough Moa left to last us one or two meals. After seeing the weird light this morning, I was staring up at the sky looking for something suspicious. Then i saw a cylinder about two feet high and 7 feet across, descend from the sky into the centre of the sky.
"Look at that!" I blurted. Asser Ben and Marek all gazed in wonder at the cylinder, before it disapeared through the trees.
"What was that?" Questioned Asser, as confused as I was.
"Follow it!" Demanded Marek.
"No, we should go up the mountain and get a good vantage point" I suggested. We all agreed and went to the mountain. As we approached it we thought it would slope like a normal mountain, but it was stepped. And each step was about 5 foot 5 high, and covered in bush.
"What the-"
"lets get up there quickly. Before it gets dark. We still haven't set up camp" I interrupted Marek. Climbing the steps was hard, very hard.
We were about 10 or 20 steps from the top of mountain, and we were all exasperated. We climbed one more final step and found a clearence in the ground large enough for us to set up our tent. We couldn't see the mysterious cylinder thing from where we were, nor could we see any signs of other human life.
We devoured some of the cold Moa we had, and there was still enough left to last us until breakfast.
hhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm hhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmm
"Do you hear that?" asked Marek. "Listen." There was a slight humming noise coming from the top of the mountain. We were all wondering what it was.
" I'm going to check it out" Marek scoffed the rest of his Moa and leapt up the stepped mountain. As he went out of sight I told Ben and Marek " This island is really...queer. Strange if you know what I mean. That flying cylinder, the weightlessness and mysterious weather on the plane, The stepped mountain. It's been grown over with bush, which means it's pretty old or someones gone out of their way to hide something" We exchanged our thoughts of the journey until dark fell, then Marek came running back down the step above us. "Guys you'll never beleive it - Haylee and stuff are in this square building thing in the top step of the mountain. It was Hi-tech as, I saw this forcefield thing, lots of screens and all this weird stuff! They kicked me out and locked their blast doors. Come check it out!" He was in a rush to get things out of his mouth.
"Why did they kick you out?" I asked Marek.
"I did kind of attack them"
"What were you thinking you fool! come on, lets go." Retorted Asser. As we were climbing up the steps Marek kept telling us things, like how it looked like a spaceship control room from a science fiction television show. We got to the top, and the last step was a large square with heavy blast doors. "When I was inside I could see stuff that was outside, it was like some sort of one way invisible wall" Marek walked up to the blast doors and banged on them with his fist. He tried miming that he wanted them to let us in. After a few minutes of banging and miming the blast doors slowly opened. Marek rushed in and Me, Ben and Asser, slowly followed him in.
We were astonished at the sight. Marek was right, it was very high - tech. I doubt that any human could have built this. There were buttons on a dashboard with strange markings on them. "Ok, Here are the rules you guys. You are in our shelter and you owe us full respect for giving you a place to stay" Hayley informed us. "And no, we do not know anything about this room or what it does, so don't bother asking." Sure, i thought to myself.
"If you're all up here why didn't you bother looking for anyone else!? They could be on the verge of death for crying out loud. You up high on this mountain, it's a great lookout point" I was unnecessarily speaking with the tone I was, but i thought I did make a clear point.
"Well we are more worried about ourselfs more than anyone else. We are-"
"Hey what do you think you're doing! get your mits of our stuff!" Marek outbursted, and ran at Maddi and co who were trying to steal our bags. He startd brawling with them. Maddi managed to escape Marek's grasp as he gaurded the bags. "Maddi, what was that for?" Haylee inquisited. I could tell she was lieing. They plotted to do this.
"What was that for! we aint done nothing, and try to take everything we have! you selfish..." I had a word to describe them, but it wasn't worth it. "We'll just stay here for the night, and sort things out in the morning."
"Fine then." Ben and Asser went back down the stepped mountain to retrieve some gear for us to sleep on while I stayed inside the control room with Marek incase he lashed out on Dilshen, Maddi, Kim, Haylee or Kieran. The moments were tense until Ben and Asser returned with survival blankets and what not.
"I'm just going to sleep in the tent. Someone has to look after it anyway." Marek said. As he approached the blast doors, Kieran pushed a blue square button and they slowly opened again.
"Now we're safe" Kieran sighed. Not another word was spoken and we slept in two different areas of the room.
