With a groan, Charlie awoke. He was stiff from a night’s sleep scrunched into an uncomfortable crouch and sore from yesterday’s exertions. He became uneasily aware that he was sitting pressed close against Carmen and her head was resting on his shoulder. Growing very warm, very quickly, he gave her a sharp shove and her soft snoring stopped in a kind of strangulated snort.

“C’mon, wake up Carmen! It’s light!” he said, explaining to the complaining Carmen why she now had a sore spot in her ribs. Charlie got to his feet and pushed his way through the enclosing roots of the pandanus tree, out of the grave-like hole.

The day was fresh and clear, the stifling humidity of yesterday thankfully absent in the early morning. He stretched, relieved to be free from his dark prison. Hearing a scuffling sound, he turned and watched Carmen drag herself out from beneath the tree.

“I bet you look how I feel,” he said by way of a greeting.

In truth, Carmen had looked better. She was filthy from the night in the earth. Her hair had almost exploded in a tangled mass of wiry curls, made even more bizarre looking by the fragments of plant life enmeshed within it. Red-eyed, bloody from numerous scratches and with one black eye from some forgotten blow, Carmen looked liked she belonged in an emergency room.

She scowled at Charlie and stuck out her tongue. “Yeah? Well you look like something I would give to Crispy for his breakfast!”

Charlie was about to reply with some scathing and sarcastic comment when he happened to glance down. His legs were encrusted in thick layers of mud from which seeped streaks of blood from the broken scabs beneath. His shorts were ragged and his tee shirt had changed colour, not for the better either. To be quite frank he didn’t smell that good, or to be precise, he thought he smelled like a dead dog.

He chuckled at the absurdity of them thinking that one looked better than the other. Holding out a hand to Carmen, he helped her up. “Sorry, Carmen. I guess I didn’t think.”

She continued to scowl but it softened a little, though it was hard to tell beneath the dirt.

“How're you doing, love-birds?” Trev said, popping up beneath the palm he had favoured yesterday. “And what a bright and breezy morning on Love Island it is today!”

“Shut up, Trev,” Charlie grunted. “Say something a bit more encouraging, why don’t you?”

“What did he say?” asked Carmen.

“Nothing useful,” Charlie turned his attention back to his old friend, “Back to normal then, Trev?”

“Back to normal, Charlemundo. Why say something useful when something unhelpful is so much funnier?”

Charlie flapped a dismissive hand at Trev. One minute he missed his friend as he would miss a limb, next minute said friend was a pain in the …

“What are we going to do, Charlie?” Carmen stood looking out at the forest around them as if expecting their pursuers to emerge at any minute.

“Tell her to relax,” Trev said. “I don’t think that you are going to have any trouble from those two blokes that were chasing you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I saw them pass by last night, heading down the mountain.”

“Really, but won’t they come back this way?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all,” Trev said this with such finality that for a moment Charlie felt chilled. What had happened last night? With a shiver -after seeing Trev’s expression - he decided he didn’t want to know.

He told Carmen what Trev had said and she seemed to relax a little. They sat and rummaged in the survival kit for some of the energy bars. Munching on these they shared the rest of the water. Carmen continued to unwind as they finished their meagre breakfast and Charlie had to admit to himself that he felt better. Even just a little nourishment seemed to raise their spirits.

If there was one consolation about their predicament, he didn’t want to go to the toilet. Nipping behind the occasional tree had been embarrassing enough for the pair of them during the course of yesterday, but at least they were saved from the indignity of needing to move anything larger. Grinning to himself with that thought, Charlie wolfed down the last of his breakfast and stood up.

“There’s no point hanging around here. Where are we going to go?”

Carmen looked up at him and sighed, “I don’t know. My dad taught me to head for high ground if I ever got into trouble like this. I mean, lost on an island, not chased by psychos. You can signal passing ships from high ground. We even have a signal mirror in the survival kit.”

“Won’t that show Winthrop-Smythe where we are?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, but then I thought that if my dad was looking for me, he would go to the same place. I think that if we head for the highest ground, we might find our dads.”

“Hold on a minute, love-birds,” Trev interrupted. “If you two are thinking of heading up the mountain, you are out of your minds.” He stood up and strode over to Charlie, his gaunt face quite serious.

“What do you mean?” Charlie looked up at him.

“I told you yesterday, if you were listening! You don’t want to be on the mountain at night! It’s…dangerous!” Trev was speaking quickly and angrily. Charlie was quite surprised at his friend’s sudden change in appearance.

“How dangerous? What’s dangerous about it?”

“Really flipping dangerous! There are things on the mountain that you do not want to meet. You almost met one last night but it went after those two men.”

“What was it?”

Trev told Charlie what he had seen and how it had passed on by. Charlie absorbed the information with a frown. Eventually he said, “So what you’re saying is that you can persuade these things to leave us alone?”

“Well, I could last night.”

“Yeah, but the thing is Trev, we really have to find our dads. I like Carmen’s idea. It seems like the right thing to do – apart from the signalling thing. That sounds mental. We could climb up now, stay for a while and then come back here for the night. After all, it was safe enough last night.”

It was strange seeing Trev get angry. His face twisted up but there was no accompanying red flush as he shouted, “It’s just like you not to listen to me. I told you it was dangerous! It’s not like winding up some teacher dangerous but proper dangerous. You could die dangerous. If you want to go up the mountain then go up the flipping thing but don’t come crying to me because the bogeyman got you! ‘Cos he will!” He stalked back to his palm and threw himself down in a profound sulk.

Oblivious to Trev's outburst, Carmen stopped trying to detangle her matted hair and whistled softly to catch Charlie' attention. “What did Trev say?” She still found it strange to watch Charlie talking to an empty space and in the cold light of day she did wonder whether she was right to believe that Trev was even there. It looked so mad! She had been so stressed out yesterday she expected that would have believed anything. Then she remembered their tracks melting away before her eyes, with no help from either Charlie or her. Was it all a dream? Was she imagining it all? Was Charlie having hallucinations of his dead friend from London? For some reason, she just didn’t think so.

“He said that the volcano was a mountain, which is about typical for Trev. Being right was never his strong point,” Charlie said waspishly, annoyed by what he saw as Trev’s over reaction. Calming down a little, he added, “He said that there are things on the volcano that are dangerous. He said one came close last night but he scared it off. I think we should still go up to the top, Carmen. I think you’re right.”

“Well, if you agree then I guess that’s settled then. We’d better keep our eyes open for something to drink on the way. I don’t know about you but I am so thirsty!” She ran a hand through her tangles and frowned when it snagged. After a couple of moments picking out some of the larger plant fragments, she shrugged and ate the last of her energy bar.

Saying nothing else, they tidied up the survival kit and headed on up the slope. At least it was easy to find their way to the top of the volcano, they only needed to clamber up the increasing incline of the ash cone that made up the top half, a top half that was even more heavily forested than the slopes below as plant life thrived in the fertile volcanic soil.

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