1 Pilot
It's been three years since the crash. Those who knew jack have long since grieved and moved on, now that his body has been recovered those old wounds are just being opened again and dried tears are being whetted again. Zach had been one of the friends that had been waiting for him on the camping trip, and when they had not seen Jack that day they had assumed he had changed his mind last minute and decided not to come. It wasn't until nearly three weeks later that they had gone back home only to find that Jack was not answering their texts or calls. Within hours Jack's phone had received hundreds of of calls and texts for one, very, terrifying reason; no one in their home town had seen jack for the entire three weeks.
The funeral was happening a month after the body was found. He was sitting in a mortuary for a while before he could have been identified, not because he was horribly unrecognizable, but because the authorities that found him didn't know about a missing person case. After three years and tens of thousands of dollars in search parties a missing person case goes cold. But he had been happened upon by luck, a twist of fate. Then, a week later the identification of the dental records came back and his corpse was back home within the month.
Zach sat down next to Alisha, another of the campers, in silence. The group hadn't hung out since they came back from the trip, breaking off after a few fights.
"I'm sorry that I blamed you. That most of us blamed you." Alisha spoke out against the hush of the room, one of the only conversations being held.
"It's alright, you didn't know. Hell none of us knew the sheer impossibility of what happened that night." Zach's voice croaked out, dusty and sore. He didn't talk much these days because of what happened; Jack was his best friend, more of a brother than a neighbor, and he didn't get too close to people after the disappearance.
"I always did hold out hope you know. That he was still out there, surviving against all odds from whatever fate befell him. I guess I was right," Zach pushed back a tear forming at his eye and lowered his head as his voice betrayed the emotions he was hiding. Alisha put a gentle hand on his back, reassuring him, knowing that Zach was closer to Jack than all of the rest of them.
"And yet I was just so wrong." Zach let the tears he had been holding back drip from his eyes as he asked that one sentence. The one question that all who knew Jack had buried deep inside.
How the hell did you disappear from Texas and wind up in Canada?
