by Perrin Briar
Bill lifted the table up and tossed it, the bowls, plates and food spilling over the ground. The Robinson family flew back on their tree stump stools. Jack and Francis fell back, banging their heads.
“Bill!” Liz said.
Bill stepped on the table and pointed at the scorched coat of arms emblazoned on its underside.
“Property of The Red Flag!” Bill read. “The Heavens collide! What are the chances of a davenport belonging to The Red Flag turning up on the south coast when we have a vessel called The Red Flag on the southeast coast? Mighty eerie, I’d say. But then there might be another explanation, mightn’t there?”
Fritz, the only one apparently unperturbed by the table tossing, sat on his stool seemingly at his leisure. But his eyes were burning hot coals.
“You needed help,” Fritz said.
“So you admit it,” Bill said. “Disobeying my express wishes.”
“You were going to kill yourself,” Fritz said.
“Am I dead?” Bill said. “You seem to know what’s best for this family. I suppose I must be. But if I’m dead I shouldn’t be able to touch you.”
He stepped forward, the wood of the table creaking, fibres snapping under his weight. Bill pressed his finger to the middle of Fritz’s forehead. Fritz pushed back against Bill’s exerted pressure, eyes locked with burning fire.
Bill dropped his finger and, not expecting the sudden release of pressure, Fritz fell forward. He caught himself before falling off his stool. Bill laughed without mirth.
“The great Fritz Robinson!” Bill said, addressing the other members of his family.
“Bill, stop it!” Liz said. “I said stop it!”
Bill spun around, raising the back of his hand, a consuming anger bending his features. His eyes drifted past Liz’s, and something in her expression caught him, and he drew his blue eyes back to her.
And he saw her, really saw her.
Bill looked at the boys, all of whom were looking at the ground, away from him, except Fritz, who glared with intensity. Then Bill’s eyes cleared, like the mist had been blown away. His face muscles relaxed. He lowered his hand and moved away. Fritz did likewise in the opposite direction.
Ernest came out of the toilet, a relieved smile on his face. It disappeared when he took in the overturned table, the food cast over the ground, the tears in Jack and Francis’s eyes, the marching figure of Fritz heading away, and the broken look on Liz’s face.
“What did I miss?” he said.
“Go talk to Fritz,” Liz said. “And take your brothers with you.”
“Mum, what’s wrong with Dad?” Francis said.
“Nothing,” Liz said.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Francis said.
Liz almost burst into tears.
“No,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be fine.”
“What happened?” Ernest said.
“Just go with your brothers,” Liz said.
“You go to empty your bowels of grubs for one second…” Ernest grumbled, taking Jack and Francis by the hand and leading them away.
Liz unconsciously touched her hair, checking it was in place. Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath, smoothed down her skirt, a dozen multi-coloured specks of vegetable and fruit juice across it like a schizophrenic rainbow.
She turned and headed behind the treehouse, down the steep incline, past the goat enclosure, and onto the soft sandy beach of the southeast coast.
Bill’s form stood stock still, black against the rushing waves, washing over his boots, unnoticed, sucking him an inch deeper into the sand. If he could have been swallowed Liz got the sense he would have let it happen. The Red Flag sat just off the beach to their right, almost fully submerged.
Liz stood beside him but said nothing.
“I don’t know the man I’ve become,” Bill said. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Despite her anger Liz’s heart broke a little at hearing that.
“I never wanted to become this man, this monster,” Bill said. “But I suppose we’re all shaped by our circumstances.”
If Liz hadn’t known better she would have said Bill was going to break into tears, not tears of overwhelming agitation, frustration or anger, but of depression, sadness and loss.
“I don’t believe that,” Liz said. “Good people come from the darkest of places, and vice versa. You’re a good man, Bill. I still believe that. You’ve just lost your way, that’s all. We all do, at times.”
Her voice became hard.
“But there’s a line, Bill. There’s a line you do not cross. Raising your hand to your family is that line.”
“I know,” Bill said.
“Francis asked me if he wanted to come here with me, to watch you, in case you struck me like you were going to earlier. And do you know what I did? I hesitated. I hate that I hesitated, Bill. That I had to think twice about whether or not I was safe alone with you. I vowed I would not marry my father.”
“Liz…” Bill said.
“I never thought it would come to this,” Liz said. “Not us. Not you. I believed you were a good man, a great man. But you ruined that image today.”
“I’m sorry, Liz,” Bill said. His voice cracked. He didn’t turn to look at her.
“Bill, look at me,” Liz said.
Bill didn’t move.
“Bill,” Liz said, her voice soft but firm. “Look at me.”
Bill swallowed something thick in the back of his throat and turned to look at her. A sad smile bent Liz’s lips. She reached up and laid a hand on Bill’s cheek.
“You’re never going to raise your hand to me or any of us ever again, do you understand?” Liz said.
Bill nodded.
“I do,” he said.
“Now, you’re going to tell me what’s eating you,” Liz said.
Bill turned to look out at the ocean.
“This island isn’t large, I grant you,” Liz said, “but it’s big enough for the rest of us to live on one side and you on the other. So, tell me. What’s the problem?”
“You asked me once what I do early in the mornings before the rest of you wake up,” Bill said.
“You’ll tell me?” Liz said.
“I can’t tell you,” Bill said.
“Of course you can,” Liz said.
“No,” Bill said. “I can’t. But I can show you.”
“Show me?” Liz said.
“Yes,” Bill said.
Liz almost turned him down. His tone of voice scared her. She pursed her lips, faking calm.
“Good,” she said.
“Follow me,” Bill said.
He turned and walked along the beach.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“They started appearing four months ago after the bombers came,” Bill said. “Sometimes it’s clothes, rags, really, in too much of a bad shape for us to be able to use. Sometimes it’s fragments of a building, or a ship, or broken toys. Sometimes it’s people.”
Bill knelt down at the water’s edge beside a bunch of rags.
“Most of the time it’s just parts of people,” he said. “Most of them have been scorched beyond recognition to be able to tell who they once were. I walk up and down this beach every morning clearing it of human debris.”
Bill picked up the rags. There was something weighty inside them. Liz was glad she didn’t see what it was. Bill carried the rags into the jungle, into an open air clearing, where sunlight filtered down and bathed it with golden light. There were rows of plain crosses. None had names on.
“I bury them here,” Bill said, “and made simple crosses with sticks, twigs, anything I could find. It’s the only proof they ever existed. It seemed inhumane to push them back out to sea to let the fish and sharks have them. They were people once.
“So many wash up here I can’t bury them all in single graves anymore. And it never ends. You think the world would run out, but it doesn’t. Every day more and more come. My muscles and heart aches before the sun
has even raised its head.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Liz said.
“The boys aren’t ready to know what kind of world we live in now,” Bill said. “The kind where cities are bombed in an effort to wipe the slate clean and start again, as if the past ten thousand years hadn’t happened.”
“They already know, Bill,” Liz said. “They were on board The Long Journey.”
“Believe me, I wish they hadn’t been,” Bill said. “Two hundred lives lost. All because of me.”
“What are you talking about?” Liz said. “That’s not your fault.”
“Rohit wanted to warn them in the mess of the danger, but I wouldn’t let him,” Bill said. “Every body I see that washes up on the shore I expect it to be one of them. Rohit, Priya, Zack… a hundred faces I don’t know the name of. I think back now and I can’t even remember the passcode to my office in Chucerne, but I can remember every face I saw that night in the mess. They're lodged in my brain like a catchy tune that gets stuck in your head. If we had done what Rohit had wanted maybe we wouldn’t be alone here on this island.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Liz said. “You did what you thought was right at the time. We wouldn’t have made it to this island if it wasn’t for your actions.”
Bill turned his palms up and looked at them.
“My hands are red with their blood,” he said, “and I’ll never wash them clean.”
Liz took his hands and held them in her own.
“They look plenty clean to me,” she said. “It’s not your fault, Bill.”
“I did what I thought was best for us,” Bill said. “Not for them. I was worried they would panic and make it difficult for us to escape.”
“If you’d have told them, there would have been panic,” Liz said. “There would have been chaos. They would have done as much damage to each other as any undead. A mob never thinks clearly. You did the right thing.”
“Thanks for saying that,” Bill said, but he clearly didn’t believe it. “That night we were on The Long Journey, do you know the scariest part for me?”
“The fire, the undead, the sea?” Liz said.
“It was trying to climb the mast to get to Jack,” Bill said. “Do you know why?”
“Because you’re not a fan of heights?” Liz said.
“No,” Bill said. “Because I knew where Jack was and I couldn’t get to him. Jack in danger, in reach, but me unable to help him. I can’t risk losing you and the boys. Not now.”
“You have almost lost us, Bill,” Liz said. “When you kept pushing us away. We’re not going anywhere. If you keep working the way you are it’s you we’re going to lose. You’re working harder than an old draft horse.”
“The sooner I can get the treehouse up the safer we’ll be,” Bill said. “Safety is the only thing we have here. But I can’t do it all alone. I know that now. I pushed myself to the limit and it almost broke me. But even now… I can’t risk losing you. Or the boys. I can’t face that. Not when you’re in easy reach.”
“You won’t lose us, you fool,” Liz said, putting her hand to his cheek and kissing him gently on the lips. “And we equally don’t want to lose you. If you keep going the way you are you’re going to end up in one of these graves. Where would that leave us then?”
Bill sighed.
“You’re right,” he said. “As always.”
“You need to show the boys this,” Liz said, gesturing to the rows of crosses. “They need to see.”
“They don’t need to see,” Bill said. “Not this. They need to believe there can be more than this, that there is a world with a future waiting for them out there. What have they been brought up for but to push the human race forward, to become masters of the earth? Instead we’ve lumbered them with a virus-infested world full of death and decay. They don’t need to see this.”
“The truth is always better than lies,” Liz said. “You’re right – it will be up to them to deal with it, but hiding it from them now isn’t going to help them. As a doctor you need to know there’s a problem before providing a solution to it, don’t you? This is no different. You can’t protect the boys from seeing this forever. It’s better they see the world for the way it is than the way they remember it.”
“It might be that way again,” Bill said.
“One day,” Liz said, nodding. “In the future. But not now. You can’t protect them from everything.”
“I can try,” Bill said.
“You can try, but you will fail,” Liz said. “Children are children. They’re going to go out and do things we don’t like. We can’t – we shouldn’t – try to control everything they do. We just have to trust we’ve done a good enough job in raising them to know they won’t do anything stupid.”
“That’s easy to say when we’re in Switzerland surrounded by friends and family,” Bill said. “But now we’re stranded on a strange island.”
“No, it’s the same,” Liz said. “In the old world there were a million ways to snag children and turn them from a good course in life. It’s the same here. We just need to learn to trust them to make the right decisions.
“We have to rely on all our strengths if we’re going to stand a chance of surviving out here. Rely on us. Use us. We are fortunate enough to have a family of exceptional children, each with their own strengths. You need to let them be exceptional. Let them use their strengths, all our strengths, to help you.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“My mouth feels dry,” Bill said.
“You’re just nervous about seeing the boys again,” Liz said. “But you can’t avoid seeing them forever on this small island.”
“You wanna bet?” Bill said.
Undergrowth snapped from behind the foliage. Then it shook and the boys emerged. They looked down at all the plain wooden crosses arranged in low rows before them. Francis knelt down and corrected a wonky one, carefully patting the earth down so it held tight. Seeing that brought a lump to Bill’s throat.
“Your father’s been burying the bodies he finds along the coast,” Liz said. “We wanted to show you what the world’s like now, the world you’re going to inherit. You should help your father do this in the future. There are going to be a lot more dead bodies out in the world that you’re going to have to see.”
“I want you all to be aware of the dangers,” Bill said. “Those zombies can wash up on our shore at any time. We have to be careful. I also know that you’re all old and smart enough to avoid danger if it comes at you.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to recover from something like this?” Fritz said.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off Liz, and kept his steady gaze firmly off his father.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “Yes. No. Maybe. It depends on the people out there and how determined they are to overcome the issues and problems we now have. Somewhere out there there’s someone immune to this virus, or who can otherwise force a change. We’re just here, trying to survive. Who knows, maybe the real winners are those who manage to survive the longest. Outlast them, and we win.”
“Do you think we’ll play a big part in ending it?” Ernest said.
“No,” Bill said. “And frankly, I don’t want to be.”
“What if the opportunity comes up?” Ernest said.
Bill thought for a long moment.
“Then we will do our part,” he said. “But for now we’ll just focus on surviving.”
Bill took a step forward.
“Look, I owe you all an apology,” he said. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting lately. It’s been very stressful and… No, that’s no excuse.”
He met each of their steady gazes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Fritz’s anger simmered on the surface like a pot spoiling to spill over, his hands tight white-knuckled fists at his sides.
But Bill approached Fritz anyway. He offered his large calloused hand. Fritz looked up into the face of his father, and the moment he di
d his expression broke and he looked away. Bill stepped forward and took Fritz in a hug, embracing him tight. He turned Fritz’s face to look at him. Fritz smiled and his eyes shimmered bright as new born stars. They hugged again, this time Fritz hugging his father back.
Bill extended his arms to Ernest, Jack and Francis. They approached, embracing every part of him: Francis his knees and thighs, Jack his waist, Fritz his left side, Ernest his right. They held onto one another like they were the last family left on the earth, and for all the sentimentality of the expression, it might have been true. They broke apart, each of them thumbing away a tear.
“I’m going to be a lot less strict from now on,” Bill said. “I’m going to trust you all not to take any unnecessary risks. But I do still have one rule: if you find a body, whether it appears to be dead or not, don’t go anywhere near it. Come and get either me or your mother. I want you all to be on your very best behaviour when it comes to these things. Do you understand me? They’re dangerous. And if you get bitten and turn into one of them, that’ll be nothing compared to how I’ll punish you for disobeying me. Understand?”
“Yes, Father,” they chorused.
They had never seen him like this before and were each of them a little bit afraid.
“I have something to confess,” Ernest said. “I have my own little secret too. I made metal cages out of scraps from The Red Flag. We needed them. We caught the animals and put them in the wooden cages just before you came to check on them. We needed the meat.”
“Did anyone do as I asked?” Bill said.
All eyes turned to Jack and Francis.
“I might have crept away sometimes to climb trees and draw maps of the island,” Jack said. “But Nips was always with me.”
Nips grinned.
“Francis?” Bill said.
Francis looked at his mother.
“Go on,” Liz said.
“I went into the jungle with Mum to find some seeds,” Francis said. “To grow vegetables.”
“We thought you needed help,” Liz said. “We all wanted to do our part.”
