As she approached the woman she could see that something was wrong. She didn't have the same expression of carefree wonderment as all the others. Her eyes were dark bruises, her mouth hung open and her tongue hung out limply.
Rachel saw what was about to happen. She pushed her way through the crowd of only mildly interested onlookers. She caught the woman as her knees buckled and she began to fall. She helped her slowly to the ground and when she looked up Billy was crouching beside them.
"What is it?" he said.
"He's..." the woman started to cry. Rachel had never seen a dead person cry. She felt distanced from it, unable to understand the motivation for such an act.
Billy put his arm around the woman and as he did so her neck fell back. Rachel saw red marks that might have been made by fingers.
The woman recovered and Billy helped her sit up. "What is it?" he said.
"He's going to kill her."
With those five words Rachel understood everything, or at least she seemed to. She grabbed Billy's arm and pulled him down to her. "We have to help Sam," she said.
He frowned at her like he didn't understand.
"If we don't help he's going to kill her."
"So?" he said. It was not spoken in anger or because he suddenly hated Samantha, she knew. It was because Billy was dead and the dead no longer understood the living.
Rachel felt it to some degree as well. What did it really matter if Sam was dead or not? Really, she would die eventually and anything she achieved between now and then was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But a small part of her remained, a part of her that remembered life and, in a distant way, how important staying alive had felt.
She couldn't explain that feeling though and she knew that, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make Billy feel it too. So instead she shrugged and said, "it's something to do isn't it?"
He looked at her and shrugged as if saving Samantha's life was about as interesting to him as another dance. The woman was already starting to recover. Jack and the two captains helped her to her feet and Rachel was left alone on the floor with Billy.
"What do you think?" she said.
"I can't think of anything else to do," he said. She smiled and thought that spending an eternity with Billy might not be so bad after all.
42
Samantha was tired. She needed to sit down to get some energy back but she thought that if she did that she might never get back up. So she carried on walking and she tried to ignore the dancers and the music that seemed to be getting closer and louder.
'That's not the only thing getting closer.'
She could see boats huddled around a bay in the distance and that drove her on. There might not be much time left and she needed to get the laptop away safely.
A small cluster of trees stood between her and the climb down to the bay. She could have gone around them but she didn't know if she would make it. Her legs felt like lead weights that she was dragging along with her.
She entered the forest and immediately knew that something was wrong. The music had stopped and the dancers had disappeared but the voice in her head became more difficult to ignore.
'He's here. He's here to kill you.'
She stopped and looked around. She saw two figures standing together by the tree. It was him, whoever he was. It was him and he had come to kill her.
43
Samantha had killed before. One of her very first jobs for The Agency had taken her to Thailand where a UK crime boss had taken up residence and made a fortune through drugs and prostitution.
She had fought her way through a marble palace filled with bodyguards and whores and managed to do so without discharging her weapon once. Then she had confronted the man and a twelve year old girl he was holding up like a human shield.
She hadn't hesitated, she had that much to be proud of. He had been holding a gun to the frightened girls head, his intentions had been clear. She hadn't given him time to talk to her and potentially gain the upper hand. She had seen him, pulled out her gun and fired. A bullet through the head must have killed him at once. Or maybe not. Maybe it had been the last evil act of a dying man, or the twitch of a corpse. All she really needed to know was that when she pulled the trigger two bodies had fallen to the floor.
She wasn't going to make the same mistake again.
Sam couldn't see the man clearly but she could tell that his face was swollen. Lumps like hornet stings stood out across his forehead and cheeks. She couldn't see the girl clearly either but she recognised her friend Millie.
Millie clung to the man's side, or maybe he was restraining her somehow. Her head was bowed.
'He's here to kill you,' said the voice and she knew that it was telling the truth this time.
44
"You're Samantha?" said the man. His voice was as lumpy as his face, she wondered if his tongue was swollen.
She nodded, slowly, all of her movements were slow now. "Who are you?"
"Call me Peter," he said. He nodded at the laptop. "What you got there?"
She placed the laptop carefully on the ground. If she survived then she would need it.
He had a gun and he had a hostage. She had nothing at all. It occurred to her then that she couldn't possibly win. What was she going to do? She didn't even have a witty remark.
"You better give it to me," he said and pointed his gun at the laptop.
She realised that he was going to kill her whether she gave it to him or not. But she didn't move.
"Hand it over," he said and he pointed the gun and Millie's head.
He would probably kill Millie anyway. What reason did he have to keep her alive? But slowly she moved towards the laptop and bent down to pick it up.
'Sam?'
She turned her head towards the sound of her name. The voice didn't sound like the one she was used to hearing.
'Sam, stop.'
A second voice, one she sort of recognised.
"Who's that?" said the man. "Who's there?"
At first she though Billy and whoever the other voice belonged to were hiding in the dark. Her heart gave a cautious soar of triumph. She might not have had a gun but she outnumbered Peter. Then she saw them come gliding into view, ephemeral, translucent.
"What happened?" she said, forgetting for a moment that a man with a gun was planning to kill her.
"We're dead," said the girl and Sam saw that it was Rachel. "But it's okay. We're here to help."
She couldn't think of a single way two ghosts could help her but felt a degree of relief that when he killed her she wouldn't be alone.
"The computer," said Peter, he was smiling now. His eyes bugging out of his head. "I will kill her."
Millie didn't seem scared. She just stood there placidly.
Sam bent down and picked up the computer.
"Let her go," she said, holding the laptop out.
"Give me the computer first."
The two ghosts hovered around them, drifting back and forth on an invisible wind.
"Give me the computer or I kill her and then you."
Sam realised that she didn't have a choice, even though he would probably kill them both anyway. She walked towards him, holding the laptop in front of her, her arms wrapped around it tightly.
When she was a couple of metres from him she could see how deformed his face really was. It wasn't just the lumps, his eyes were black and huge, his hair was falling out and he stood at an unnatural crooked angle.
"Put it down," he said and waved his gun at the ground. Sam willed Millie to do something now that the gun wasn't aimed at her but she continued to cower at his side.
She placed the laptop on the ground and took a step back.
"Keep going," said Peter and she took a few more steps. Then he turned to Millie and said, "pick it up."
She resisted, for maybe half a second, and then did as he told her. Sam watched with horror as she handed him the laptop and then he shot her. The bullet exploded out the b
ack of her head and then her body fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
She stepped towards her but in the blink of an eye Peter turned the gun on her. "Now for you," he said.
She knew with absolute certainty that he was going to pull the trigger and shoot her. She felt little anguish about the fact, only a slight disappointment that she wouldn't complete her mission.
He raised the gun and she didn't try to avoid it. She was tired, too tired to run and end up dead all the same. She faced him with a look of quiet resolve and waited for him to pull the trigger.
45
He pulled the trigger but at the same moment the ground began to shake. The bullet clipped her ear but it was just cartilage and blood rather than brain matter.
She saw him fall to the ground as towers of golden fire lit the night sky. She clamped a hand over her ear to stem the flow of blood and braced herself against a tree.
"Get down," said Billy as calmly as she had ever heard him.
Sam fell to the floor, moments later a flame shot through the air and would have taken off her head if she had remained standing.
"He's getting away," said Rachel.
Samantha looked up and saw Peter climbing over Millie's body. He had the laptop in his hand.
She scrambled to her feet but kept low. She wasn't sure what she was doing, it seemed pretty clear now that neither of them were going to be leaving the island, only that she didn't want him to have the computer.
He moved slow, slithering over the ground like a snake. She jumped onto his back and heard the air being forced out of his lungs.
"The gun Sam," said Billy.
She saw it in his left hand and grabbed his wrist. She slammed his hand into the ground again and again until his fingers were bloody and finally gave up.
He rolled her over before she could get the gun for herself and in the vibrant light of the fire she saw with horror that his jaw had come unhinged and hung uselessly from his head.
He climbed on top of her and she covered her face as he punched her. The blood from his hand mixed with the blood from her ear and she felt sick at the thought of what that might do to her.
She pushed him away but he was too strong. She pounded his chest but it felt like concrete below his filthy shirt.
When he reached for his gun she managed to climb out from beneath him and up onto her feet.
She kicked his hand and the gun went flying into the darkness. He lunged for her and she felt him grab her t-shirt but it came away in his hands.
The fire grew more intense. She could feel it burning her skin even from a distance. The hairs on her arms were singed. She grabbed the laptop and started to run.
"He's chasing you," said Billy. He floated beside her effortlessly. There was no concern in his voice, just the statement of fact. There was nowhere to go but towards the fire. When she had got as far as she could she stopped and turned around to face him.
"What you gonna do now missy?" he said, out of breath and without a jaw, his voice seemed to arrive in her head without passing through the air. He stood about five metres away, the bloody distorted remains of a man. He looked as if he had been dead for weeks. A long slimy tongue came out of his mouth and slid across his top lip.
"You want it?" she said.
He nodded and his tongue flopped around like a dog's tongue.
"Come and get it then," she said and held up the black laptop computer so that he would be able to see it against the brightness of the fire. She had no idea if what she had planned would actually work but she was all out of options.
Peter ran towards her, drool falling from his mouth and evaporating almost instantly in the raging heat of the fire. He held his arms out like a child running for a toy, heedless of the fire that was to be his ultimate prize.
At the last moment Sam pulled the laptop away and Peter couldn't stop in time. He ran into the flames and vanished. She didn't even hear him scream.
"There he is!" shouted Billy.
Sam turned and saw a ghostly shape rise above the field and she knew that the danger he posed her had passed. The ghost shapes of her friends went after him and she was left all alone.
There was no time to congratulate herself. She had seen what the island could do to people and that poison was already working its way through her system. It might already have been too late but even if she never made it off the island she had to make sure the laptop did.
She ran away from the fire and scrambled down the rocky hill towards the bay. She could feel the heat of the flames warming her back and see the coolness of the sea ahead. There were still boats in the harbour .
The fire followed her halfway down the slope and then she felt the heat begin to diminish as she put more distance between herself and it. The hill flattened out and she ran towards the pier where the first sail boat bobbed up and down on the water. There was no time to check for food or other supplies. She only needed it to get her to the closest bit of land where she could contact The Agency.
Samantha untied the ropes that secured the boat to the dock and let the current and the wind take her away while she tried to recover her breath. She held the precious laptop against her chest and tried her hardest to stay awake.
The Island burned brightly but no one ever saw it. The ghosts of a thousand dead passengers claimed it for their own and, in time, Samantha would join them. The little boat that carried her weary body and the laptop she had fought so hard for, carried her away on the early morning breeze. Days later she would be picked up by a larger boat, unconscious and burned, on the deck of the sail boat, still clutching the laptop in her arms.
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About the Author
James Loscombe was born in Crawley, England in 1983. He graduated with an HND in video production from Reading College and a degree in English Literature from the Open University. He has been writing fiction since he was eight years old. James lives in Reading, England with his wife Tamzin and son Jude.
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