The New Tales of the Gobi Desert
West Island School, Eric Wang, Fiction: Group 3
J
ack and I were hired to fly a valuable and rare fruit from Japan to Sweden, in our old,
slowpoke single-engine Cessna, to a lab full of biologists for research in Stockholm. Jack
commented, “This is going to be a long trip!” but I knew he was excited because it was his
first flight as a co-pilot.
We were 4 hours into the flight when the engine broke down. “Patrick can you hear me?”
Jack shouted over the noise of the wind breaking through the silence. He tried to get hold of the
parachutes. The cockpit sounded like there was a cyclone whizzing and whirling. “What did you
say pal?!” I replied as I controlled the Cessna. “Where’s the instruction manual!? I need it to check
the Cessna’s system and try to find the problem. I can’t seem to find it anywhere!” I asked worried
about crashing.
“Please concentrate! There is a LAKE NEARBY, if we crash, I hope we crash there! I DON’T
WANT TO DIE!!!” bellowed Jack. He was right; I didn’t want to die either.
The Cessna was spinning rapidly down, down, down. It crashed in the lake, it was horrendous,
we were wet and soggy but we were alive...
When we managed to get out of the lake, on the beach there were some crabs, we picked them
up and put them in the bags. We didn’t have any food left.
I found a newspaper with the date 2013.12.29. I shouted to Jack, “Oi! Jack, come here! This
newspaper is two days old!” but Jack shook his head and stared at the sinking Cessna. Now, it felt
everything was hopeless; I hated the feeling of being stuck in the Gobi desert.
“We’re doomed!” screamed Jack, “We’re stuck in this bloody, stupid desert of nothingness!” as
he stomped the ground like a vibration of an earthquake. BOOM! BOOM! I was able to stop him
before he lost his temper. We were deserted; I was taking out my walkie talkie pressing 999 and
speaking “WE’RE STUCK IN THE DESERT. WE NEED BACK UP, MAYDAY! MADAY!” but there
was no replies for the next few hours.
I never felt so scared in my whole entire life. Were we going to be rescued? Would we die?
What are we going to eat? Was the water in the lake drinkable? The cactuses stored enough water
to fill our water bottles and we drank the fresh, tepid lake water.
After drinking, we dived into the water because it was so hot. “It is boiling out there you
know,” shrieked Jack sweating and dripping, “I just can’t stand it! I want to get out of this damn
place!” he gets grumpy every time we do something. We decided to build a hut near the water.
At day we slept and at night we would go out and start gathering supplies of fruits and leaves
off the trees of the oasis. We tried to limit our meals, but whenever I turned around; I heard this
sound “yum yum yum yum…” and saw Jack eating most of our supplies.
The first week has passed, we already ran out of food because stupid Jack kept eating our
supplies. I hadn’t eaten anything for 4 days but then during a walk around the oasis, I spotted
new and different trees. Some had odd looking coconuts. I started gathering because I was hungry
and Jack was taking a siesta. There were also bananas, apples, peaches and some blackberries and
strawberries as if someone had planted it there, I didn’t really think about and focused my mind
on the food.
Then, I heard something rustling in the grasses. Suddenly some extraordinary people came
