LOTF: Before and After

Phase 2: Chapter 7

Several nights after Ralph and Jack's run-in on top of the hill, Jack had formulated a plan. He trained his hunters and set out to bring it to life.

Piggy awoke in the night to the sound of leaves rustling and what sounded like footsteps.

"Ralph!" he whispered, shaking his sleeping friend. "Wake up!"

"What is it?" Ralph asked, half asleep, struggling to keep his eyes open.

"There's something out there" Piggy informed him.

Ralph stopped and listened for a moment. "I don't hear anything" he concluded. Until he did.

"I hear you there, Piggy" Jack's unmistakable voice came from outside their shelter. "Come outside, Piggy... I want you, Piggy."

Then the sticks started poking through their shelter. Not one, or two, but several. Piggy started to panic, and cry.

"Why can't you just leave us alone?" Ralph shouted with a voice that was groggy from sleep.

Piggy screeched as his glasses were slipped off his face. "I got the glasses!" one of the hunters called out, and immediately they all started cheering and running back to their own camp.

Piggy cried all night, and into the next morning. Ralph went to get water, only to return to find Piggy still in tears as he'd left him.

"We did everything just the way grownups would've" Piggy sobbed. "Why didn't it work? Things would be much better here if it wasn't for him... I wish he was dead" Piggy confessed.

"No you don't" Ralph said sadly.

"I do!" Piggy continued to sob through his words. "We could just give up, and join his tribe, then we'd at least be with the others."

"No, Piggy" Ralph flat out refused.

"Ralph? I can't see" Piggy reminded him.

"I know" Ralph sighed, defeat in his voice.

The two boys hiked over to Jack's camp the following day, after Piggy continued to stress how badly he needed his glasses back. They found Sam and Eric sitting at the entrance of castle rock, cutting up a slain pig with their hunting sticks.

"Halt! Who goes there?" Roger shouted from on top of the rock wall that lined the island.

"Don't be stupid, you know who we are!" Ralph called up at him. "I've got the conch and I'm calling an assembly! Where's Jack?"

"What do you want now?" Jack asked as he appeared in the entry way to his camp, castle rock.

"You heard me. I've got the conch and I'm calling an assembly" Ralph repeated.

"Why don't you two just fuck off? This is my end, and my tribe! Why don't you just keep to your own end?" Jack shouted back.

"You're the one who won't keep to your end!" Ralph reminded them. "Tearing up our camp and stealing Piggy's glasses. You've gotta give 'em back!"

"Got to? Who says?" Jack spat back.

"I do!" Ralph challenged daringly. "Piggy can't see! If you wanted to have a fire, all you had to do is ask."

Jack climbed down the rocks, and could see the fear and hesitation in Ralph's eyes as he got closer. "I don't have to ask!" he retaliated, and started smacking the walking stick Ralph had brought with him with his own hunting stick.

The two boys started fighting with their sticks like they were in a sword dual on TV. The other boys started cheering Jack on, continuing to play into the fight. Jack successfully knocked the stick out of Ralph's hand, and the younger boy quickly dodged his next jab. Knowing he had no other option, he lept at Jack and knocked him to the ground. For the second time in only a few days, the two were in another physical altercation. This time, they laid down on the ground like animals and wrestled, kicked, and punched each other.

When Piggy blew the conch, both Ralph and Jack were caught off guard. They separated and looked up at him. Ralph then quickly put space between him and Jack as the blonde boy rose to his feet. Ralph stood up after Jack did.

"I've got the conch! Let me speak!" Piggy demanded.

The other boys began to boo Piggy and poke fun of him. They started throwing stones that were loose on the rocks at him.

"Stop that and just let Piggy speak!" Ralph yelled over the crowd.

"Please, this is serious!" Piggy insisted. "What I wanna say is if we don't get rescued, we might have to live here for a long time" he began, as the others continued to taunt and mock him. "Maybe even the rest of our lives!"

His last sentence brought the group to silence.

"If we are stuck here until we get old, then we can't go on acting like kids" Piggy continued, "we've gotta be sensible and make things work.."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ralph saw Roger and a couple others who stood up at the top of the rock wall. He turned and watched as the older boy pushed a giant, lose bolder down the wall, with no worry or consideration for anyone down below. He had a target in mind, and he didn't care who else may be collateral damage.

"No!" Ralph screamed as loudly as his little lungs would let him. He couldn't save Piggy, his intervention would only get him hurt too. So instead, he watched in horror and heartbreak as the boulder fell to the bottom of the wall and took Piggy down with it. He was reliving Simon's death as this all unfolded in front of him. He once again, stood and watched helplessly as the hunters ended the life of another one of Ralph's allies.

Once the bolder had rolled down and away, Ralph stepped forward to determine if Piggy was really dead. And he was. The stunned looks on the other boys faces was as apparent as it had been two weeks ago when Simon was killed. Even those who'd been chanting and screaming only seconds before, looked like they'd just seen a ghost now.

Ralph looked up at Roger, who as usual, showed no sign of emotion on his branded face. Ralph bent down and touched his hand to Piggy's body, and stared as a giant pool of blood formed beneath the chubby boy's head. His eyes were lifeless, staring up at nothing in the sky. His head trickled blood out of several different wounds, it seemed.

Ralph realized that Piggy was gone, hopelessly and certainly gone. He turned his head to look at Jack who stood still in his place on the rocks. If Ralph was angry before, Jack hadn't seen nothing yet. And the younger boy's face told the hunter that. Jack, too, looked a little shaken up, but this time, he did a better job of hiding it.

"You're not gonna get away with this" Ralph assured Jack, despite the fact that it was Roger who had really killed Piggy.

"Yeah?" Jack began as adrenaline pumped through his veins, his chest rising and falling quickly as he began to panic. "What are you gonna do, huh? What are you gonna do about it?" he challenged Ralph.

Ralph didn't know what he was gonna do, if there was anything he could do. He stared at Jack, pain seeping through his brown eyes. He'd just lost his second and only remaining friend left on the island. He knew it, and Jack knew it.

"You're out of it, pal" Jack scoffed, "you're on your own." Jack turned the other hunters around and back up the rock wall as he started to throw stones at Ralph, the others joining him.

Ralph resisted the pressing urge to cry as he brought himself to stand up, leave Piggy's body behind, and run back towards his camp. Ralph would soon realize how alone he really was when two boys turned into one. There had only been twenty four of them on the island to begin with, and now with Piggy and Simon gone, that made twenty two. It was now Ralph against twenty one, he concluded. There would be no more fire, no more roaming the island freely, no more worrying about restoring order, no more hope of getting rescued; only a brutally lonely fight for survival.

What little life Ralph had left inside him to keep him going, he'd have to channel it into something far bigger than it was right now to survive. Because right now, he wanted to do nothing but wave a white flag until it whisked him up and away; as far away from the island as the wind would take him.