Survive

by Tom Bale

  But it’s not a snake. It’s maybe a rope, or a chain. When Dylan’s leg twitches again, there’s a disturbance in the sand and more of the chain is exposed. It seems to begin at Dylan’s feet and lead all the way to the water.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jody asks.

  ‘Dunno.’ Their son is alive; that’s all Sam can focus on for now. He starts to move but Jody snatches at his arm.

  ‘Watch out for traps.’

  Good point. He checks the beach as he climbs down. Once on the sand, he crouches low, trying to spot any trip wires or patches of ground where a pit might have been dug and covered over. By the time Jody and Grace join him, he’s satisfied it’s safe to move forward.

  ‘Stay behind me,’ he says. ‘Let’s go carefully.’

  But he ignores his own advice almost immediately, speeding up when he sees another movement from Dylan. It’s a strange jerking motion, his arm wobbling above his face. Sam can’t understand why the boy hasn’t cried out, or looked round at them.

  Then he gets closer, and sees that Dylan is still unconscious.

  The chain is thick and heavy and clotted with rust. It might have come from a boat: an old anchor chain. What the hell is it doing here?

  The answer comes a few seconds later, as he closes the distance and sees that the chain is attached to a pair of metal cuffs around Dylan’s ankles. Maybe it’s his imagination, but Sam seems to hear a low grinding noise, then the rasp of metal on sand. The links take a little jump towards the sea, and so does Dylan, his body pulled a few centimetres down the beach.

  Sam collapses.

  51

  When Sam falls, the room is briefly quiet. Before that, there have been gasps, whistles, even incredulous laughter.

  Listening in to several conversations, Gabby learns that it took four weeks and cost more than three hundred thousand dollars to modify a marine winch and place it underwater. The power source had to be hidden half a kilometre away, and fed through cables sunk deep in the sand. To Gabby it seems an obscene waste of time and money; not to mention the sadism involved. Then again, what does she know? No doubt the guests here would regard such expenditure as trivial compared to space rockets, dinosaurs and a twenty-seven-storey home in a city where millions live in poverty…

  They’re told that the scene is covered by four cameras, two in the trees overlooking the beach, the others set into rocks at each side of the bay. A powerful zoom lens allows them to see the fear and desperation in Jody’s face. She’s gripping her daughter’s hand. Grace looks bewildered, and pitifully afraid. Dylan is unconscious, the chain tugging him slowly towards the water. Sam is sprawled on the sand beside him.

  ‘He faints?’ asks an elderly Israeli man. ‘Or is it cardiac arrest?’

  To laughter, someone drawls, ‘Not gonna save his kid by taking a nap!’

  They can hear the girl screaming her father’s name. The sound quality is noticeably better here. Borko explains that a microphone was secreted in the boy’s clothing.

  For some reason, Gabby is revolted by this small detail. She turns away, only to find Jesse easing into uncomfortably close range.

  ‘There’s a tide here, right?’ he asks Borko.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you couldn’t know exactly when this was gonna happen – the parents finding him. So how d’you calculate the clearance needed to stop the kid from drowning?’

  Borko doesn’t respond, which is answer enough.

  Jesse’s lips slowly curl into a smile of rueful admiration.

  ‘Oh, jeez. That’s harsh.’ He’s laughing. ‘That’s, like, really harsh.’

  Jody drops alongside Sam, even as he rolls over and opens his eyes. It looked as though he passed out, though he insists he didn’t.

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just…’ He gestures at Dylan. Another twitch of the chain and their son is dragged closer to the sea.

  Grace has slumped on to the sand with her head down on her knees. Cocooning herself. Jody kneels beside Dylan and whispers his name. When he doesn’t respond, she carefully lifts his arm clear of his face, yelping as his body is jerked by the chain. His eyes remain shut, his expression peaceful. He doesn’t seem to be hurt.

  She leans closer to make absolutely sure he is breathing. Sam, meanwhile, is holding the chain in one hand, testing its connection to the shackles around Dylan’s ankles. They’re made of heavy iron, each one circular apart from a straight section that appears to be hinged at one end. Old and rusted, like something out of a pirate movie.

  That prompts a dim memory from earlier – a remark about a treasure chest? – and then Sam says, ‘They’re locked.’

  ‘Locked? You mean they need a key.’

  ‘Yeah.’ As he makes the connection, there’s a flare of panic. ‘Dylan! Wake up!’

  He reaches for Dylan’s pocket but Jody stops him. ‘He threw it away, don’t you remember?’

  Sam’s eyes lose focus as he goes back in time. Then he lets out a roar: ‘Shit!’

  Again the chain jumps and moves. Dylan bumps over a buried rock and lets out a sleepy moan. Jody and Sam have to shuffle down the sand to stay level with him.

  Jody says, ‘He was digging with it, and…’ You lost your temper ‘… we got cross.’

  Sam stares deep into her eyes. It feels like they’re reading one another’s minds with ease, but not in a good way.

  ‘Which direction?’

  She does her best to picture it. ‘Top of the beach. Near the trees.’

  ‘Right.’ Without another word, Sam is up and sprinting. She understands at once: they have so little time. Looking at the grooves in the sand made by Dylan’s body, he’s been hauled a metre or so in the couple of minutes they’ve been here.

  But Grace is staring in horror at what appears to be her father running away. ‘He’s fetching something to help Dylan,’ Jody assures her. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get him free.’

  ‘We won’t. They want us to die.’

  ‘No, it’s just silly games they’re playing.’ Jody smiles, marvelling at this placid voice that bears no relation to how she’s really feeling. ‘While we wait for Daddy, let’s both try pulling on the chain, as hard as we can.’

  Grace, to her credit, does as she’s told without protesting. But there’s too much tension in the chain to lift it off the ground. They’re forced to lie on their backs and wriggle beneath the chain, wrapping their feet around it as though they’re clinging to a zip wire. Flakes of rust drift down on to Jody’s face. Blinking and spitting, she grips the chain in both hands and feels a grinding vibration through the links.

  She digs her heels into the sand, using all her strength, praying it will be enough to foul up the mechanism that’s reeling it in. But the metal slides through her palms as if meeting no resistance at all. There’s a squeal of pain from Grace as the friction burns her hands.

  Jody tells her to come out; she’s done her best. But she makes another attempt herself, aware that it’s probably futile, knowing she still has to try. As she turns her head to avoid the glare of the sun, she spots a white streak across the sky: a jet passing overhead. For a second she wants to shout and wave, but it’s a ludicrous idea.

  Can anyone see what’s happening down here? Can they tell the trouble we’re in?

  Of course not. And with a bitterness that’s entirely new to her comes another thought: Even if they could tell, why would they care?

  ‘Hurry up, Sam,’ she whispers, but the plea is lost in another tug of the chain; another twist of the knife in her heart.

  52

  Sam jumps down on to their home beach and sends a spray of blood over the sand. He was vaguely aware that he’d crunched his knee against a rock as he clambered over the ridge, but hadn’t realised it was bleeding, or that his trousers had ripped.

  He runs on, a fog of panic in his brain. All that comes through clearly is the ticking clock, the chain moving every ten or fifteen seconds; the slow drag of it that will, if it isn’t stopped, take his boy beneath the wate
r.

  If Sam had paid attention at school, he’d probably be able to figure out how long they have: how many centimetres per minute the chain is moving. But he’d dicked around, hadn’t he? He remembers backchatting the maths teacher: ‘What’s the point, Miss? I’m never gonna use any of this stuff.’

  How she would laugh, eh? She was Scottish, a right miserable cow. Kept stressing how hard they had to wurrk. Well, he’s wurrking hard enough now, isn’t he?

  He reaches the boat and positions himself at the spot where Dylan was sitting earlier. A few precious seconds to kneel down and twist the way Dylan would have twisted – he can’t remember for sure, that’s the problem – and then act out throwing the key towards the trees.

  He thinks he has the basic direction, but he keeps a close eye on the ground as he moves up the beach, sometimes using his foot to sift through piles of dry sand. With his head dipped, the sweat runs off his nose like a waterfall. A taunting voice in his head is saying, What if an animal’s come and taken it away? A bird could have swooped down and carried it off in its beak…

  Then he sees it, just lying there. Almost too easy. Imagine if Dylan had thrown it in the sea?

  ‘Fucking stop it!’ Sam shouts at himself, snatching the key and running back like he’s Usain frigging Bolt. As he’s climbing the ridge he notices the wound on his knee is clogged with sand, which has stopped the bleeding, at least.

  He’s shocked by how much further Dylan has moved: surely it’s only been a couple of minutes? But the scar in the sand above Dylan’s head has lengthened by a metre or more. Jody is kneeling by the chain, holding it in both hands. It jerks again and takes her and Dylan with it.

  Grace is first to see Sam. She says something to her mum, who looks up and waves. Sam lifts one arm, hoping she can see the key. Jody’s body seems to slump – from relief, he guesses. Grace frowns, then turns to look at her brother. As Sam gets closer, he understands why.

  Dylan is waking up.

  ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it,’ Sam calls.

  Dylan opens his eyes and automatically twists away from the glare of the sun, only to be wrenched by the chain. He lets out a frightened squeal, which Jody smothers by throwing herself over him.

  ‘Baby, it’s okay, don’t worry.’

  ‘Here we go.’ Sam kneels at Dylan’s side, wipes the sweat from his face and takes hold of one of the shackles, lining up the key to fit into the lock. The chain moves again and Sam has to manoeuvre himself to stay with it. All of a sudden the gentle wash of the waves against the shore seems louder. They’re, what, two or three metres away?

  Plenty of time. He tries to calm himself, keep his hand steady and get this done. Then it’s back to the camp and they’re gonna drink the bottle of rainwater to celebrate, and sod the consequences…

  The key slots in, but nothing happens. He pushes it a little harder, expecting to hear a click and feel something give.

  Nothing.

  The chain cranks forward. Dylan starts writhing, trying to kick, but the chain is too tight and he can’t bend his knees. Grace is wailing in sympathy, and all this noise is making it even harder to concentrate…

  In a panic, Sam fumbles the key out and tries the other shackle, knowing deep down that he’s got to release them both if he’s to save his son.

  Jody turns, frowning at him. ‘Come on.’

  ‘It won’t unlock.’

  ‘What?’

  He tries to be slower, more delicate; sometimes you can push a key in too far.

  But it still doesn’t open. He looks at Jody and feels his face go slack, as if something inside him is dissolving.

  ‘It won’t…’

  Jody already has her hand out. She snatches the key and they switch places, Sam stroking his son’s forehead while Jody tries one lock, then the other. Between each attempt there’s another crank forward. As if to taunt them, a slightly bigger wave pushes in, foaming on the sand before slowly retreating.

  ‘It doesn’t fit.’ Her voice is tiny, scared.

  ‘Must be the wrong key.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Why, Sam?’

  ‘Why? Because they enjoy fucking with us, that’s why.’

  Jody stares at the key like she’s willing it to be the right one. The chain moves again, another link disappearing into the sea.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she asks. It sounds like she’s begging him but Sam doesn’t know, he truly doesn’t, he’s useless–

  Another jump: Christ, did he drift off or is it speeding up? He glances to his left, the water almost close enough to touch.

  ‘Sam! What are we going to do?’

  He shakes his head. He has no answer, and Jody shouldn’t be putting him on the spot – not when Dylan can hear them.

  How is Sam supposed to admit that he can’t save his own son?

  53

  The tension in the room is palpable, but only Gabby seems appalled by what’s happening. You didn’t say it was going to be this dangerous, she thinks. But does she dare confront Borko?

  The guests are clustered in their little groups, and in some there are wagers being made. She hears a Russian man declare: ‘Half a million that he dies,’ and the men with him cackle and take the bet.

  ‘Cliffhangers,’ Jesse says. ‘Corny but effective.’

  Acting as though the American has said something perceptive, Borko adds, ‘We know our emotions are being manipulated, but we can’t resist.’

  He catches Gabby’s eye, as if seeking her opinion. She nods politely and eases away, signalling to Borko that she wants him to follow. Once they’re alone, she says, ‘Tell me you’re joking? You won’t really let that boy drown?’

  Borko opens his arms in a gesture of helplessness. ‘The solution is there, with the parents.’

  ‘You could switch it off. You must be able–’

  ‘Sadly, no. The remote activation doesn’t allow for that.’

  ‘But they found the key and it didn’t work.’

  ‘Ah. That was rather wicked of me. But they still have time.’ They turn to look at the nearest screen. Dylan’s feet are less than a metre from the water’s edge. ‘Let’s see if they have the resourcefulness to meet the challenge.’

  ‘This isn’t a game of Sims.’

  ‘No,’ Borko agrees, looking vaguely offended. ‘It’s much more interesting than that.’

  Gabby wilts, knowing full well that he wants her to beg. ‘Please, Borko. Don’t do this to them.’

  ‘It’s a test, remember. A test of their character, their courage. If they fail – and I hope they don’t – then it has to be said that the world can probably do without passing on their DNA to future generations.’

  A series of gentle waves are followed by another larger one. It splashes over Dylan’s feet and covers the shackles for a second or two. Jody rears back in panic and hates herself for it. She’s still holding Dylan’s hand but it’s not enough. He senses her fear and stops crying, regarding her with a strangely adult expression. It’s as if, all at once, he fully comprehends what’s happening to him – and not only that, but he accepts it.

  The chain slips into the water, link by link, and it feels like only Jody cares. Sam is barely moving: he seems to have gone into shock. Grace is lying face down on the sand, her body quaking with quiet sobs. The next wave hits Dylan’s foot and hardly retreats. Jody can feel all her hope and strength slithering away.

  Then Sam says, ‘The other end.’

  He’s staring at the water. The shallows are clear enough to see the chain running along the seabed.

  She holds up the key, the hope growing inside her like a sly and deceitful companion. ‘Could there be a lock at the other end?’

  Sam’s already taking off his shirt. Another pull on the chain and the water creeps up to Dylan’s shin. As Sam extends his hand, she remembers how he struggled yesterday.

  I should be doing this. I swim better than him.

  ‘Sam–’

  ‘Just try to keep his head abov
e the water. If I can’t find a lock I might be able to jam it up, at least.’

  She gives him the key. He steps out of his chinos and wades in up to his shoulders before slipping below the surface. There’s a splash as he dives down, his feet briefly reappearing as he scissors his legs and kicks towards the bottom.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ Jody mutters, though she has no idea who she’s trying to convince. Dylan is staring at her, open-mouthed, and she’s nearly broken by the memory of holding him as a baby, his dark eyes solemnly roaming her face; how she was so often spellbound by the deep, unknowable curiosity of his infant gaze.

  The chain tugs him again, the water lapping at his knees. In a snap decision prompted by the memory, she helps him to sit up and then backs into the water herself so she can lift him into her arms. To get enough clearance it means wading in up to her waist, but this at least creates some slack in the chain.

  By holding him tight and taking the burden of the chain in her hand, she’s hoping to fool Dylan into believing there’s nothing to worry about. But the weight of the shackles is a shock, and the chain is still being reeled in. She’ll have no choice but to step into deeper water, all the time straining to keep his head clear of the surface.

  Could she float, if necessary, while bearing all this weight? She knows she’ll have to try, but it’s impossible to overcome the remorseless pull of the chain. She is tormented by an image of Dylan being dragged from her grasp and slipping under the water.

  Even then she won’t give up. When he was ill with meningitis, she told herself she’d swap places with him in an instant, and now she will breathe for him if she has to, taking gulps of air and diving down to blow that air into his mouth. The kiss of life.

  Except that it sounds ridiculous. She probably saw it in a movie and of course it would have worked a treat; not so likely in the real world.

  But if it doesn’t work, she can’t let him die alone. Dylan is her baby, her little boy. She’ll have to sink beside him and accept that she’s saying goodbye to Sam, and to Grace, open her mouth and let the water flood her lungs and end it, finally; this wicked, wicked game they’re being forced to play.