by Tom Bale
‘Yes,’ Gabby squeaks, and clears her throat. ‘Maybe you will.’
‘It’s very odd.’ Trevor is frowning deeply. ‘The Fischers didn’t mention a thing about any accident.’
‘Fischers?’
‘The other winners,’ his wife says. ‘A German family.’
Trevor’s frown has taken on the look of an accusation. ‘You were there to see them off.’
‘Oh… yeah. I didn’t know their names. The, er, accident happened quite late on, so perhaps they’d already gone.’ She gestures at the taxi. ‘Gotta rush, sorry.’
Allowing them no chance of a comeback, Gabby dashes out of the hotel. It’s all she can do to dredge up a smile for Viggo as she jumps into the taxi and collapses on the back seat. She suspects the Baxters are watching from the window so she digs out her phone and pretends to be reading a text.
Except she doesn’t have to pretend. There’s one waiting for her: Where are you?
‘Fuck,’ she mutters to herself. She texts back: I’m coming.
She pauses, thumb wavering over the screen, then adds: There’s a problem.
44
Jody encourages Grace to sip some water. The poor girl is listless, sleepy and confused. She ought to be lying on clean sheets in a cool, shaded bedroom, not hustled along a beach in the sweltering heat. Although her face is flushed, she doesn’t appear to be sweating, which worries Jody all the more. She suspects the fever is a consequence of the bite on Grace’s leg. The flesh around it is horribly inflamed; the slightest touch causes squeals of pain.
They bribe Dylan with a few berries and some water, and then they’re ready to go. The bottle Jody rescued from the pit is empty, so Sam suggests they bring it along. He’s still talking about finding a puddle or a stream, although up till now they haven’t spotted anything resembling a source of fresh water.
Jody wants to take some tools with them. It seems like a better choice of word than ‘weapons’, but that’s really what she means. Sam agrees, collecting up the bungee cords and the two shorter wooden stakes.
‘Means taking your goal down.’ Jody is only gently teasing, but the look he gives her could strip paint from a wall.
They set off across the beach at an ambling pace. Grace’s lack of energy is in stark contrast to her brother, who seems to have perked up after his sleep. The reason, he announces, is the angel lady.
‘Who?’ Jody asks, with a sense of dread weighing heavily in her stomach.
‘The angel lady. She spoke to me.’
This comes as a relief: Dylan hasn’t been out of their sight.
‘It was a dream, darling.’
‘I know,’ he says, with a withering glance. ‘She wanted to take me away.’
‘Where?’ Sam asks.
‘I dunno, but it was better than here. We had chocolate.’
‘That’s a nice dream, then.’ Jody leaves it at that. She hopes it means the other sightings were imagined, too. But, in that case, what did she see through the trees?
Nothing. You’re just spooking yourself.
They negotiate the first ridge and drop on to the neighbouring beach. It’s as they climb the rocks at the far end that the cage comes into view. It’s been placed about midway around the bay, some ten metres up from the shore. There are no other signs that anyone has been here, the sand once again brushed smooth to preserve the illusion that this object has materialised from nowhere.
The cage is about the size of a child’s play pen. It has what looks like a steel frame, with the sides covered in thick wire mesh. The holes are too small for them to see what’s inside, and yet Jody has an impression of rapid movement: small dark shapes zigzagging in a fast haphazard fashion.
The closer they get, the slower they walk. The reluctance weighs heavily on them both. When they’re fifteen, ten meters away, Sam knows for sure. He thinks Jody does as well.
‘Right,’ she says to Grace. ‘I want you and Dylan to sit down here. Can you do that?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To have a look at that…’ Glancing at Sam, she gestures at the cage.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Don’t know yet,’ Sam says, with the same guilty look that Jody just gave him.
They have to physically plant Dylan down on the sand. At the worst possible time he’s turning hyper.
‘Your sister is poorly,’ Jody says. ‘You need to stay together.’
‘Yeah, Dyl,’ Sam adds, ‘you have to guard her.’
‘Like a soldier?’
‘That’s right. Good work, sergeant!’ Sam salutes him, then hurries away before Dylan has other ideas.
Jody runs to catch up. The inhabitants of the cage are well aware of their presence; some freeze for a second, in a twitchy kind of way, before rushing from side to side even more frenetically than before.
Up close, they see that one side of the cage has a removable panel, set into a recess and fixed in place with half a dozen thumbscrews. The holes in the mesh around the panel are slightly larger, and the screws are positioned very close to the edges of the panel.
In the centre of the cage there’s a large plastic container, white with a red lid held on by metal clasps. It looks heavy, solid, and tightly sealed. The kind of thing you might take on board a yacht to keep your supplies from getting wet or spoiled.
The task is clear enough. After the pit, they know what to expect. The panel, once removed, would leave a space large enough for one of them to reach in and grasp the container.
The problem is the rats.
Jody counts at least twenty of them: hungry-looking creatures with a greasy sheen to their fur, as though they’ve just crawled out of a sewer. Their tails are long and slimy, like thick pink worms grafted on to their bodies. At any one time about half of them are trying to clamber up on to the container, but the plastic is too slippery.
Grimly, Sam says, ‘What’s the betting there’s food in that pot?’
‘I think so, looking at how the rats keep going back to it. Something’s driving them mad, and it’s not just because they’re in the cage.’
‘They’ve been starved.’ Sam dangles his fingers a few centimetres from the panel. A couple of the rats leap into the air and cling to the side, their razor-sharp teeth clamping on the mesh. ‘Those screws are fiddly. It’s gonna take a while to undo them.’
‘You can’t. Rats carry all kinds of diseases, and we have no medicines. One bite, or a scratch…’ She shudders.
‘So maybe I could wrap something around my hand?’
‘We don’t have anything strong enough. Anyway, we can’t risk opening it up.’ Jody feels sick, picturing the rats swarming out of the cage and heading straight for Grace and Dylan.
‘So what, then? Do we just walk away?’
‘I don’t know. There must be something in there worth having.’
Sam’s shoulders have slumped. Lowering his voice, he says, ‘You’re right. But you know we’re gonna be giving those bastards another cheap thrill.’
A glum silence follows, Sam scraping his palm over the bristles on his chin. Jody aims an encouraging smile at the children, though Grace’s eyes are half-closed and Dylan is marching in circles around her, singing or chanting to himself.
The hopelessness hits Jody like a slap, an assault on her previous good intentions. ‘This is pure torture. Mental, physical, emotional torture.’
Sam is nodding vehemently, and Jody immediately regrets having lit the fuse.
‘I’m gonna kill someone for this,’ he growls, then turns and kicks the cage. There’s a loud metallic clang and the rats leap and run in frenzied circles. Clenching his fists, Sam looks up at the sky and roars: ‘DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU FUCKERS? I’M GONNA KILL SOMEONE FOR THIS!’
Jody knows how much it’ll upset the kids but there’s no way she can say that to him. Better that he purges the rage from his system.
She hurries over and assures them that Daddy’s fine; it’s nothing to worry about.
Dylan
, in a tremulous voice, asks, ‘Is he c-cross with us?’
‘No, darling. He’s not cross with any of us.’
‘Who, then?’
‘The people,’ Grace says simply. ‘The people who stuck us in this shithole.’
It’s the first time Jody’s ever heard her eight–year-old use such a term, and for a moment she has no idea how to react. Then she does the only sensible thing in the circumstances: she laughs and gives her daughter a kiss.
45
Sam has one arm folded across his chest as a support for his other arm, which is bent at the elbow, enabling him to prop his chin against his jaw. He’ll stand like this when he’s figuring out how to fold wallpaper around the corner of an uneven wall, or blend in new paintwork when it turns out that the shade of one tin doesn’t quite match the others.
They can’t ignore the pot if there’s any chance it contains food or drink. But they can’t open up the cage while it’s full of rats. Jody’s right. A bite from one of them, out here, could be fatal.
So: kill the rats. That seems to him to be the only option. But how?
He studies them for so long that Jody grows restless and comes over. Several times he senses her preparing to speak and then think better of it. The sun is white hot and blinding above them; stand here much longer, he thinks, and I’m going to keel over.
‘Can’t poison them.’
‘What?’
He was thinking aloud; now he indicates the trees. ‘I dunno if there’s any plants or berries that might poison them.’
‘No idea. Aren’t rats meant to be able to survive anything?’
‘I bloody hope not.’ He considers breaking off a long splinter of wood from the stake, feeding it through the mesh and jabbing away at the rats. But the speed those things move, he’d be lucky if he killed a single one. Getting them all would take hours.
‘Sam, we need to be in the shade. And the kids–’
‘Yeah, yeah. You go.’
She doesn’t move, perhaps because she’s worried about what kind of dumb idea he’ll come up with. He looks around, praying for inspiration. All he gets is sand, rocks, trees. The sea slapping against the shore. A few gulls off in the distance, whirling and swooping. One of them takes a kamikaze dive towards the water…
He grins. The phrase that’s popped into his head is the one Jody uses to describe herself and the kids if they’ve walked home from school in a downpour.
He assesses how to move the cage. It doesn’t look particularly heavy, but their fingers will be juicy targets for the rats. He starts to undress.
‘Sam…?’
‘Help me with these.’ He hands her one of the bungee cords and explains that he wants to hook them at each corner of the cage, on the side that faces the sea. ‘And keep your fingers well clear.’
‘Don’t worry, I will. So what are we doing here?’
He gives her a cheeky look. ‘Drowned rats.’
‘What?’
‘Come on.’ Like him, she strips to her underwear. Once the hooks are in place, they take up the slack in the cords and drag the cage across the sand. Inside, the container wobbles but doesn’t fall over. Jody isn’t reassured.
‘What if it breaks?’
‘It won’t.’
‘What if it’s not waterproof?’
‘It looks like it is.’
‘But if it’s not?’
‘Do you have a better idea?’ He doesn’t intend to snap, but that’s how it must sound to her. ‘Never mind. Sooner we do it, the sooner we’ll know.’
She puts more effort into it, and they wrench the cage so hard that this time the container topples over. It doesn’t break, though Sam’s heart nearly stops for a second, imagining all kinds of food tumbling out and being gobbled up by the rats.
The little bastards are going crazy, some of them clinging to the roof of the cage, their tails swinging like whips. Maybe they know what’s coming, he thinks.
At the shore, a line of half-buried rocks brings them to a halt. It’s Jody’s idea to wedge the cage against them and pull until the whole thing flips over. By now she seems to have accepted that the container is strong enough to take such a battering. But it means they have to go into the water first and drag it towards them.
‘The kids…’ she says, when they’re in up to their knees. She’s afraid Grace and Dylan will panic at the sight of their parents disappearing into the sea.
‘Good point. I’ll take it from here.’
He can see her fretting.
‘You sure?’ she asks.
‘Yep. This is the easy bit.’
Not quite true, but thankfully it’s mostly smooth sand underfoot. As the sea penetrates the cage, the rats respond by climbing the sides. Too heavy to float, the big plastic container bumps and rolls in the shallow water sloshing around it. Sam pauses to study the seal on the lid. If that cracks, it’s all been a waste of time. But so far, so good.
Jody is sitting with Grace and Dylan, her hands cutting and diving as she explains what Daddy’s trying to achieve. Or maybe she’s just spinning a load of bullshit to keep them calm.
Sam hauls the cage into deeper water, to the point where he’s struggling to keep his feet planted on the ground. The rats fight for space at the top of the cage, some of them floating, others hanging from the mesh like bats. For this to work he’ll have to get it completely submerged. That means taking a breath and allowing himself to sink beneath the water, crouching for a better angle so he can pull the cage the final few steps.
He springs up, breaks the surface and spits seawater from his mouth. There’s a horrible temptation to swallow some, until he realises how disgusting it tastes. He swims round to the opposite side, still gripping the bungee cords. Now all he can do is wait.
He can’t see the rats clearly but he can sense the disturbance underwater; bubbles spurting up in tiny streams. He knows they’re swimming and fighting, desperately clinging to life. Like every living thing on the planet, they don’t want someone else to come along and wipe them out.
If Jody’s right, and this is all about tests and trials, did their watchers imagine Sam coming up with this solution? Did they expect him to be ruthless enough to destroy these animals in cold blood?
He stares at the treeline. Bound to be cameras up there. No way of knowing exactly who’s watching, though he has a pretty good idea.
He remembers how the president’s son looked in his jetpack: the superhero, the man of steel. Strutting through the crowd like a rock star. Talking down to them as naturally as any silver-spooned royal. Well. It’s a pleasure to select that image from the Conchis and place it inside the cage: Borko in a dinner suit, drenched and drowning, kicking and punching while his cheeks suck in and almost implode, eyes bulging because it’s so painful, it’s such a slow and terrible way to die…
And Sam smiles at the thought. Like a true psycho, he thinks. Way worse than his brother.
Drown, you tosser, for what you’ve done to us. Drown. Drown. Drown.
46
It’s like the agony of waiting for a medical test result. When her mum found a lump in her breast, she confided in Jody but swore her to silence; not even Jody’s dad was allowed to know. ‘He’ll go to pieces, and that’s no help to me.’ As it turned out, thankfully, there was nothing to worry about. This time, said the look in her mother’s eyes.
It feels like there’s nearly as much riding on this. Jody can feel the heat radiating from Grace, but the poor girl is shivering. Dylan won’t stop with the questions. What’s Daddy doing? Can I go and see? Will the big mice swim away?
‘Rats, stupid,’ Grace mutters, to Jody’s dismay. But at last Sam is moving again, dipping his head below the water to take a look. He gives her a thumbs up, then motions her towards him.
‘I need to help Daddy, okay.’ She has to fight her way up, Grace begging her to stay, Dylan pleading to go with her. Sometimes Jody doesn’t know how she resists the urge to scream.
Sam is trying to shift
the cage on his own when she joins him. He’s gripping two of the bungee cords in one hand, but his other hand is holding the cage itself.
‘Are they all dead?’
‘Yup.’
There’s a savage gleam in his eyes that Jody tries to ignore. She says a silent prayer: Don’t let the container be broken or split. Don’t let it be empty, or full of acid.
Together they wrestle the cage out of the water, stopping in shock at the sight of the wretched corpses. Many are bloodied and torn, as if the creatures turned on each other in their final moments. Better them than us, Jody thinks, but it’s a sad, disturbing sight. They didn’t ask to be starved and placed in a cage.
Gingerly, Sam unscrews the plate and has a careful look inside. The container has come to rest with bodies piled around it, so he uses one of the stakes to prod them out of the way. Then he reaches in, cupping his hand around the container, trying to ease it towards the opening. He ends up at full stretch, his head pressed against the metal frame.
‘Do you want me to do it?’ Jody asks.
‘I’m fine.’ He mutters something else that she thinks is, You wouldn’t want to.
Eventually he has it, and Jody quickly shoves the panel back in place. She’s sure that one or two of the rats are still twitching.
Sam sets the container down between his knees and plays out a little drum roll on the lid. ‘If this is empty, I guess we’ll have to eat the rats.’
‘We can’t. They’re diseased.’
‘If we put ’em on the fire, wouldn’t cooking make them safe?’
‘Not necessarily.’ Jody has no idea, but she doesn’t want to encourage him.
‘I mean it. If we don’t catch any fish, or trap some birds, this might be all we have.’
‘Mm.’ She wants to scream: Open the bloody thing! Instead, she says, ‘Better to use the rats as bait, in your trap.’
‘I guess.’ A snort, and then – thank God – a smile. ‘Let’s see what’s in here.’
Sam will only admit it to himself, but he’s afraid to open the container. Given how things have played out so far, there’s got to be a chance it’s booby trapped.
