by Tom Bale
Jody yawns, staring at the ceiling. ‘I hope that car’s here soon.’
Sam checks his watch but has to blink a few times before the numbers swim into focus. God, he’s knackered. Worse than after a day scraping off woodchip in an Edwardian stairwell.
‘Five minutes and…’ The words come out thick and mangled. Five minutes and I’ll ring for a bloody taxi is what he wants to say. Even if we have to pay for it ourselves.
He tries again but can’t finish the sentence. There’s a tightness in his chest. His head’s swimming and he wants to get up because Jody has her eyes shut. She can’t have fallen asleep that quickly – and yet she must have. Her glass has tipped over, some juice spilling out. Grace notices and leans over to pick it up, but her own glass drops to the floor with a thud and she collapses on to her mother’s lap.
This isn’t right, Sam thinks. We’re all tired, fair enough – and yeah, Dylan is asleep, but he’s only five, so that’s understandable – but the rest of us, the rest of us should…
What?
Sam tries to snatch back the thought in his head, hiding far down in the dark, but nothing comes to him and the glass, now, is so heavy; his eyes, heavy, his legs his arms won’t move and he
he can’t…
they
can’t–
Why?
Part II
Activation
22
(someone screamed)
... oh, but his head, and he’s too warm, he’s overheating, and it’s making his head feel worse
(POUNDING)
and he wants to stay down, down in the dark where it’s safe
(someone screamed)
but he mustn’t, he has to come up: it’s his du... his duty. Be the bigger man. Be the bigger man and wake up.
Another scream – and oh Christ it’s Grace, it’s his daughter screaming, and now Sam’s awake and the pounding in his head comes after him as he tries to sit up, and when he cracks his eyes open the light coming in is burning dazzling fucking terrible, like it could kill him all over again.
But he’s not dead, he just feels like death. And how he feels doesn’t matter if Grace needs his help.
He can’t sit up, so he rolls on to his belly. Placing one hand over his eyes, he spreads his fingers to control how much light can get in. There’s a rushing noise in his ears, and beyond that a feeling of wide-open silence, interrupted every few seconds with the sort of lonely whimpering sounds that a child makes, woken miserable and scared from a long and disturbing dream.
‘Dad...’ Her voice is a rasping cry.
‘I’m here. I’m here, Grace.’ Those are the words his brain sends to his mouth, but he’s not sure if that’s what comes out.
His eyes are open, the light’s shocking but bearable, and what he’s staring at is sand. He tries to lift his upper body off the ground but his limbs are weak and juddery. There’s a hangover tilt and swirl to every movement of his head, sending an urgent message to his stomach:
Unload. Unload.
And he does, spewing a foul green liquid onto the sand, his stomach clenching as though it’s being parcelled up to fit somewhere smaller. Afterwards there’s an acid taste in his mouth, a painful flash like a bulb firing in his brain, and within that flash there’s a man flying through the air towards him–
No. It’s not real. He shuts his eyes and lies still until the image fades. He can feel the heat from Grace’s body as she shuffles closer. He manages to turn to her and she’s sobbing, her face red, dribbles of vomit on her chin and her neck. They’re both sick. Sick, hallucinating, wiped out.
Come on: she needs you.
He gathers his daughter into his arms and holds her tight. She buries her face in his chest; her hair tickles his chin and smells faintly of all the good things he associates with his little girl. They stay like this until her sobbing eases off and the big hitching breaths signal that she’s calmer.
But when he looks over her shoulder, what he sees is still a beach. It’s no hallucination. A long wide beach, sweeping outwards in a curve that ends with a ridge of higher ground, a natural breakwater formed of – limestone, is it?
‘Where are we, Daddy?’
Gingerly he turns his head to check the other direction. It’s just more sand, sea, rocks. Trees grow thickly along the top of the beach, almost down to the water at the opposite end of the bay. And there’s nothing else in sight. No buildings, no boats, no sign of human activity at all.
He remembers something then, snatches at it like the corner of a comfort blanket. They were – they are – on holiday. Somewhere hot. Somewhere like this.
‘It’s okay,’ he mumbles to Grace. ‘We’re not stranded.’
‘But I don’t... I don’t know why...’
Me neither. Sam has never felt so off kilter, and it’s all the worse because he can’t think clearly with the throbbing headache, the burning in his gullet. It’s like the world has swallowed them up in one place and spat them out somewhere else.
‘Do you feel all right?’ he asks. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Just dizzy. And my tummy’s a bit... yuk.’
He hugs her again, then studies her carefully. Her eyes are bloodshot, her face pale. She’s wearing a black skirt and pink top. Sam checks his own clothing: chinos and a short-sleeved linen shirt. They look creased and grubby, as if he’s been in them for a couple of days, but equally it could be from lying on the sand. And his watch has gone, he realises, leaving a band of pale skin around his wrist.
‘Where’s Mum and Dylan?’ Grace asks, her voice cracking with emotion.
‘I’m not sure.’ Sam hates it that he has to ask this next question. As her dad, he wants to be the one with answers. ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’
Grace gives it some serious thought. ‘We were in a car. A really big car.’
‘A Hummer!’ He can visualise it himself, and he’s sure these are the clothes they were wearing. He manages to sit up, which feels like a minor achievement. Grace is massaging her temple, as if to tease out another memory.
‘We were going somewhere. A hotel?’
‘Yes.’ He clicks his fingers. ‘Con... Conchis?’
‘Because we won a prize.’
He nods. Now he has more: the rep, Gabby, and a snobby couple who were all set to go in their place. Trevor and someone. Trevor and... Michelle?
No. She’s part of another couple. He tries to picture them, but what he gets instead is bright flame shooting from a mouth: a woman breathing fire. A man flying straight towards me–
I’m tripping, he thinks. He has various friends and relations who have tried pretty much every illegal substance you could name. After a little dabbling in his youth, Sam decided it was a waste of time and money. No way would he ever choose to feel like this.
The party at the Conchis must offer clues, but all he gets are crazy images, like reflections in a broken mirror, which only make him more confused, more frightened – and right now, for his daughter’s sake, he can’t afford to be frightened.
So, three questions, none of them safe to ask out loud if he wants to keep Grace from panicking.
Where are we?
Why are we here?
What’s happened to Jody and Dylan?
23
After helping Grace to her feet, they do some careful stretching to make sure they’re not injured in any way. Sam’s muscles are stiff with cold and cramp. Judging by the low sun, it must be early in the morning. Could they have been here all night?
He checks his pockets. He has a packet of mints and a couple of tissues. He’s also got a small disposable lighter, which he’s sure he hasn’t seen before, but no cigarettes. Along with his watch, his phone has also gone.
They have a mint each, which helps remove the taste of the bile. ‘I’m thirsty,’ Grace says, and Sam realises that his mouth is as dry as an old chamois cloth.
‘We’ll get something soon. Back to the hotel for breakfast, eh?’
A nice
try, but there’s no mistaking her scepticism as she looks around. ‘Where is it?’
‘Good question.’ He can’t bring himself to lie to her. ‘That’s what we have to find out.’
While he’s trying to get his bearings, he notices that the sand where they were lying is scuffed, but beyond that it’s completely smooth in every direction. There are no footprints, no tyre marks, no sign of whoever put them here. It’s like they just dropped out of the sky.
He examines the ridges at each end of the bay. One is much lower than the other, so he decides to go that way. Grace takes his hand and trudges along with him, saying nothing when Sam looks back – feeling idiotic as he does – to make sure they’re definitely leaving footprints in the sand.
In a forlorn voice, she says, ‘Were we naughty?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t know.’ She clings to him suddenly. ‘We had guns.’
‘What?’
‘Maybe it was a dream. Even Dylan had a gun, it was really big.’
Sam puts on a brave act, shaking his head and doing his best to reassure her. But the talk of guns has struck a chord. He can picture a scene of blood and chaos.
A sound comes to him, a low-pitched droning that at first seems like another symptom of his raging headache. Then he thinks to look up. High overhead, a passenger plane cuts the morning sky in half, a trail of white vapour spreading in its wake. The sight makes him feel ridiculously grateful: it means the whole world hasn’t ended, at least.
The bay is a couple of hundred metres long and the lowest point of the ridge is close to the shore. Before he starts climbing, Sam has a moment when he’s tempted to dip his face in the sea and fill his mouth: the idea of cool water is so appealing, even though he knows it’s undrinkable.
He helps Grace clamber up. As they reach the top, where a few thin bushes are sprouting from dusty soil, they’re able to see that beyond this breakwater lies another wide sandy bay. This one is bordered by a high cliff that extends far out to sea, ending in a stack of fallen boulders. Similar rocks are scattered across the beach, along with clumps of dark matted seaweed.
There is something else, but Sam doesn’t realise until Grace, with a tiny cry, points it out to him.
A body.
Sam lets out a groan of such despair that it’s probably as upsetting for Grace as if he’d screamed. He regrets it immediately. He’s got to hold his emotions inside, no matter how much it hurts.
He starts forward, torn between telling Grace to stay put and wanting to keep her close. He needs to spare her, if it turns out that Jody
(don’t go there she isn’t she can’t be)
won’t wake up. But leaving Grace alone isn’t fair either, and it might not be safe.
‘Careful,’ he says, as they slip and slide on the way down. He can hear Grace panting and knows it’s not because she’s puffed out; his own breath is coming in the same short gasps, his heart beating way too fast, blurring his thoughts into a single desperate stream:
Don’t-be-dead-don’t-be-dead-don’t-be-dead
They’re closing the distance when Grace points at something else, and Sam catches movement: what he thought was only a clump of seaweed has another body lying beyond it. The figure that kicks and rolls free is Dylan, and now they’re close enough to hear him making a sort of mewling noise, as if he’s given up hope that anyone will take notice.
‘Dylan!’ Although Sam roars his son’s name, it’s Jody he’s running towards. She hasn’t moved since he first set eyes on her. ‘Can you get your brother?’ he calls to Grace.
‘Yeah. Is Mum...?’
‘She’s okay, I’m sure.’ Turns out that he can lie to his daughter, if it’s important enough. He’s relieved when Grace doesn’t argue, leaving Sam to make the horrible discovery alone.
He drops to the sand at Jody’s side. She’s lying face down, her head bent at an angle that doesn’t seem natural. She’s wearing the clothes he remembers from the car journey. Her hair is tangled and feels gritty with sand when he cups her head in one hand and with the other tries to ease her on to her back.
Her body feels cool but not cold. From the position of the sun he guesses she was lying in shadow until recently. But she’s alive. She stirs when he moves her, eyelids fluttering, then seems to lapse back into unconsciousness.
Sam glances up to check on Grace, who is cuddling Dylan. Sam gives her a thumbs up, and her answering smile claws at his heart.
Leaning close, he gathers Jody in his arms and listens for the gentle whoosh of breath in her nostrils. The pause between each one is an agony in itself. He folds his body around her to lend her some warmth, whispering her name and telling himself that as long as she goes on breathing there’s still hope.
24
Jody struggles into the world with the feeling that she is trying to escape many long and terrible dreams, unremembered but for one instance of supreme horror: she witnessed the death of her children.
The sense that she has lost them is so vivid that she’s already crying when she wakes to find Sam’s arms around her. He’s crooning her name, just as he would if he needed to console her through the most unimaginable pain.
‘I can’t...’ she manages to say, meaning I can’t go on. I can’t go on living without them.
It’s all she can do to say their names, and when she does he responds at once: ‘They’re here. They’re both here. We’re okay.’
He’s crying, too, as though it’s her he’s worried about. Confused, she open her eyes, squinting against the glare of the sun, and sees Grace and Dylan hurrying towards them. Alive.
Still sobbing, Jody gives a joyful laugh. Only now does she take in the fact that they are on a beach, so she looks round, expecting to see the hotel behind them, and other guests lounging on sunbeds, but there’s nothing. They’re completely alone. That can’t be right…
‘How much do you remember?’ Sam asks.
It’s such a silly question that she almost wants to laugh again. Her brain tries to shift back in time and immediately goes bump, as though she’s turned to leave a familiar room and walked into the wall instead.
‘We…’ she starts, and then Grace and Dylan slam into her, hugging and weeping and clinging to her as though they’re the ones who had the nightmare to end all nightmares. Still ecstatic that they’re alive, Jody is trying to comfort them when it sinks in that she has no idea what time it is – what day it is – and no recollection of how they came to be here.
Once she’s sitting up, the children get comfortable, Dylan lying at her side with his head on her lap, Grace cuddling up next to her.
‘Do you feel all right, physically?’ Sam asks Jody. ‘Any headache?’
‘God, yeah. Like a hangover.’
‘Same here. Grace and I woke up on the next beach along. It’s like we’ve been…’ – he mouths the final words – ‘dumped here or something.’
‘But that’s…’ Her spasm of fear sends a tremor through Dylan and Grace, and Sam winces, looking apologetic. A silent understanding passes between them: they have to be careful how they discuss this in front of the children.
‘Do you remember the Hummer?’ he asks. ‘These are the clothes we were wearing for–’
‘The party!’ Things are coming back to her. ‘At the Conchis. And the president’s son was there.’
Sam’s eyes widen. ‘Oh Jesus, that’s what it was.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t he have… a jetpack thing, strapped to his back? He came flying up towards us.’
‘And there were women on stilts, breathing fire.’
‘And they took the kids away…’
Together they patch up the holes in their collective memory, adding the mayhem in the soft play area, the tormented waiter from their own hotel. Sam and Jody had brought the children out, and someone agreed to arrange a car home.
‘A man… Hussein, wasn’t he called?’ Jody says.
Sam nods. ‘Yeah. They brought us
drinks.’
‘What time was that – about four or five?’
A tiny snore from Dylan: he’s drifted off again. Grace, too, is heavy-lidded, and she has her thumb in her mouth; a habit they’d encouraged her to break three or four years ago.
‘And now it’s early morning, wouldn’t you say?’ Sam goes on.
‘I suppose. Don’t you have your watch?’
‘It’s missing. So’s my phone. And your bag, by the look of it.’
‘Oh, shit.’ Jody looks around, then checks herself over. No handbag, no phone – and even their hotel’s wristbands have been removed. But in the pocket of her cardigan, she finds a small tube of sun cream. ‘I know I had this with me, but it was in my bag.’
‘So someone put it there, like they wanted us to have it.’
‘But why?’ She can feel herself trembling; the idea that they must have been drugged, lifted up and carried, that unknown hands were on their bodies, going through their pockets–
She makes a loud retching sound and clamps her mouth shut, willing herself not to be sick. Sam gently rubs her back, then offers her the packet of Polo mints he’d brought to the party.
Jody takes one and places it on her tongue, grateful for a sugar hit. But she frowns at what else he found in his pocket.
‘A lighter. Have you been smoking?’
‘No. This isn’t mine.’
‘Then why is it…?’
‘No idea.’ Sam’s voice is shaky, uncertain. He’s every bit as scared as she is, and it makes Jody realise what an enormous challenge they’re facing, simply to resist the ever present urge to panic.
Wearily, he scrapes his fingers through his hair. ‘So we were waiting for a car. Did it turn up?’
‘I can’t get beyond us being at the Conchis.’
