Islanders

by John Barlow

  The air around him suddenly filled with a series of tremendous explosions, jarring his legs and throwing him to the ground. He picked himself up, and moved closer to the door. As he approached it he could see that it was different. It was old and wooden, like the others. But the handle was not old, the handle was new: this was a door that somebody used regularly.

  He tried the handle. It was locked, but the door itself was coming loose, as the small wooden shack was shaken apart, its sides flapping, vibrating against one another, gaps appearing between the walls and the roof. Behind him, another of the chimneys was starting to crumble at the top. A sheet of concrete as big as a house dropped from it its deteriorating side, sending enormous clouds of dust everywhere. Then, a new and more fearsome shudder came from beneath his feet, an awful, grinding blast of noise.

  Ben ignored it. He took the door handle and yanked it as hard as he could. The whole door came away, falling clean off its hinges, and fell to the ground as the rest of the shack wobbled and shook, close to disintegration.

  Inside there was nothing but a hole in the ground. A dark hole, with a stairway leading downwards, down into the depths of the earth. Wiping the sweat from his face, he looked behind him, and heard another massive crash of concrete, louder even than the last. The place wasn’t going to last much longer. This was his only chance. He gripped the gun, closed his eyes for a second, and went down the steps.

  The heat was now so intense that it seemed to have got inside his body and was cooking his bones, every inch of him burning up horribly. The stairs were made of earth, and their edges crumbled as they began to disintegrate. Down he went, not knowing how far he could go before he’d have to give up and try to save himself.

  Just a bit further, he thought, the light from above getting weaker and weaker, the darkness below more penetrating.

  It was no use. This was leading nowhere. At any moment the whole place was going to cave in, and he’d be dead. That was it. He was going to go back up, to get out of the power plant before it was too late.

  Then, as he was about to turn, he heard something. Amid the shudder of constant underground vibration, there was a voice. A moaning sound. For a moment he stopped. Then, very slowly, he took another step downwards, towards the voice.

  He found himself at the bottom. It was a small, dark room, a dungeon, it seemed, with no exit. Again, the moaning sound. Then a metallic rattle. The sound, he was sure, of chains.

  “Hello?” he yelled, gripping the gun in both hands, too scared now to ask himself whether this was the right thing to do, too scared to do anything but shout, although as he shouted he was ready to fly back up those stairs.

  “Help!” came the reply, a man’s voice, so haggard and tired that it might have been a dying animal. “Help”, it came again, weakly, from the corner of the room.

  “Hello?” Ben shouted again, pointing it into the dark space in front of him. “Who’s there?” he said, too scared to move.

  Then, as he strained to see into the corner, he retched with fear. There was a man on the floor, a big man, by the look of him, with a shaggy beard and long hair, all matted and caked with grime. And he was moaning with pain. Ben stared down at him.

  The man, who was only half conscious, was chained to the wall, and the intense heat which now rose from the floor was frying him to death. Another few minutes inside this place and he’d be done for.

  “Who are you?” Ben said, the gun shaking so violently in his hands that it would have been useless as a weapon.

  “Help... please...” the man said, straining to speak, his head rolling on his chest as if there wasn’t an ounce of energy left in him.

  “Dad?” Ben said.

  “Help me...” the man gasped.

  “Dad?” Ben said again. “Is it you?”

  The man raised his head an inch off his chest. “Who... are...?”

  “Ben. Ben Brewer.”

  The man slowly opened his delirious eyes. He looked at Ben, first with confusion, and then, gradually, with a kind of amazed disbelief.

  “I've come for you,” said Ben. “I got your message.”

  The man opened his mouth, as if to speak. But nothing came out.

  Around them the earth began to rock. Lumps of the wall started to fall, and several explosions sent huge shock waves through the ground, one after the other.

  Ben saw the chain that came out from the wall. His dad’s ankle was shackled to the chain.

  “Right,” he said. “Turn away.”

  He pointed the gun’s barrel down into the ground, against the chain. Above them the ceiling began to crumble. He squeezed his eyes closed. And pulled the trigger.

  *

  Ben Brewer and his dad were scrambling up the stairs, kicking dirt out behind them, their bodies smashing into the walls as they threw themselves up to the surface, behind them the dungeon already caving in on itself.

  When they emerged, there was no shack. Most of the other buildings had also collapsed. Around them two of the chimneys were half their normal size, and looked like they would be piles of flaming rubble before long. The sound was immense, petrifying.

  They ran between two of the chimneys, Ben helping his dad, who staggered and limped, incredibly weak, a thick ring of iron still around his ankle. He held a hand up to his eyes as the bright light blinded him, and hobbled as Ben led the way.

  “There!” Ben said, pointing to the security wall that separated the power plant from the rest of the Complex. A section of the wall had collapsed. They made their way over to it, both of them so tired that it was more like swimming through thick, boiling oil.

  On the other side of the wall they stopped, gasping desperately and unable to go a single step further. They slumped down to the ground, their backs resting against the wall. Ben looked at his dad, who was panting for breath, his eyes closed against the blinding of daylight.

  They’d made it.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  At the far side of the fun-fair, they all sat in the Jeep and watched as big lumps of the chimneys crashed to the ground. Even here, at a good distance from the power plant, the noise was unbelievable. As each new explosion shook the ground, thicker bursts of smoke and sparks were sent high into the air, turning the sky a dark orange. Their hearts sank: Ben was right inside.

  “Poor kid,” Bad said.

  “He had guts, though,” Worse added.

  Bad nodded. There was nothing else to say.

  Jason had now rejoined them. He told them what had happened up in Control Tower (which was now little more than a vast pile of rubble in front of the power plant). Terra stroked Jason’s hair, and looked at the chimneys with a blank, stunned face. That it could turned out like this, she thought, shaking her head, her heart almost breaking in two.

  Sawyer and Pol sat, slumped against the sides of the Jeep, and watched as their world was destroyed. Everything they had always hated and despised was crumbling, falling to earth, consumed in a cauldron of flames. With Ben Brewer in it.

  The sky was full of smoke and dust.

  “He might have made it...” Silver whispered to her brother, again and again, speaking like a robot.

  “Yeah,” Coby said, dazed and shivering. “If he just got clear of the Control Tower, that’s all...”

  “Yes, that’s it...” she said, for the hundredth time. “If he just got clear...”

  “You know,” said John Brewer, propped up against a wall at the other side of the fun-fair, shouting to make himself heard about the roar of destruction, coughing and spluttering as his weakened body throbbed with pain and exhaustion, “you know, son, we’ve met before.”

  “When!” Ben said, as he examined the craggy features of his dad’s face, worn down by years of imprisonment, its skin pallid and dry, his eyes small and nervous against the light of day. But, more than anything, the hair: mountains of thick, long dark brown hair, and a big mess of a beard.

  “I’ve never seen you in my life!” And as Ben said it, he couldn’t help
a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. “You left before I was even born!”

  His dad looked right at him, drawing himself closer.

  “I saw you when you were a baby,” he dad said. “Three weeks old, you were. On the Island. I came back to see you.”

  “Yeah, then you left,” Ben said, unable to stop himself. “Left mum on her own... and me...”

  Tears streamed down his face, and he bit his lip, determined not to cry. Determined to be strong. But it was too much.

  “I left because I had to come back here,” his dad said, and gestured behind him, at the power plant. “To try and stop all this.” He paused, searching for the right words. “After they caught me, do you know how many times I tried to escape?” He looked down at the ground in front of him. “And,” he said. But he stopped.

  “What?” Ben said, unable to stop himself. “And what? What!”

  His dad sighed. “Do you know how much I regretted leaving you? Every single day? All four thousand eight hundred and fifty three!”

  “You counted them?”

  “Every one, Ben. Every single one.”

  “Wait,” said Silver.

  She screwed up her eyes and looked again, across the fun-fair.

  “Who’s that?”

  Coby stood up and stared.

  “Is it...?” he said.

  “I don’t believe it,” Terra mumbled, as she recognized John Brewer, that tall frame of his, the hair straggly and long, his face older and thinner, and his legs weak as he limped. But absolutely unmistakable. It was John Brewer. With his son at his side.

  “It is,” she said. “Both of them!”

  Ben led his weak, hobbling father by the hand as they made their way through what remained of the tents of the deserted fun-fair.

  “Is that what she said?” Brewer asked Ben.

  They were talking about Ben’s mum, whilst all around them the power station boomed and crashed towards its final destruction.

  “Yeah, she said you were a hero, and heroes get killed. She hasn’t forgiven you, you know!”

  “I bet...” his dad said, smiling for the first time in so very long.

  “Really angry with you, she is. You wouldn’t believe it!”

  “Oh, I think I would, Ben...”

  “Well, she wouldn’t have let me come! I had to sneak away.”

  “That’s ’cos you’re a hero, son.”

  “What?” said Ben. “I’m no hero. I just came to help my dad.”

  They looked up and saw the Jeep up ahead.

  “Come on,” said Ben, “I’ll introduce you to my team.”

  “Team? Look at you!” his dad said, laughing as they walked on together.

  At that moment there was a low rumble. They both turned. The noise escalated, growing and multiplying quickly as a series of blasts ripped through the sky, drowning out everything else. The two half-collapsed chimneys now split, enormous cracks racing up their concrete sides and forcing them apart. In their place rose a flash of white, as a great surge of energy tore the two chimneys down, sending crackling, sparking light high into the sky.

  “Well done, son,” John Brewer said, squeezing his son’s hand tight as they watched. “You did it. You did what I never manage. You destroyed this place.”

  Ben watched the sky as it filled with blinding light.

  And he hoped that, out to the east, his mum was watching.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “And then,” said Coby, “I picked up a sticker-slug with my tin...”

  “And I fired it at Harman,” Bad interrupted. “Got him right between the eyes!”

  John Brewer laughed out loud, a great, deep laugh.

  They were all walking down the eastern road. The Jeep had eventually run out of battery power a couple of miles from Terra’s cottage. Behind them in the distance, the Complex was still smoldering, wisps of smoke rising from the chimneys, two of which had disappeared, the other two still standing.

  Pol and Sawyer were with them. Before they had left the Complex, Pol had run home to ask her parents if she could go with Ben and the others. But the Complex was in chaos, now that Sullivan and the commandos had gone. Her parents weren’t there. So she left them a note, and told them not to worry: she was with John Brewer’s son, and that he would look after her.

  “I told them I’d be back,” she said to Ben, after she’d rejoined them.

  “Don’t worry, Pol,” he told her. “We’ll all be back. For sure.”

  They were walking east, with Tah at the back on his emu, just in case a wild rat needed scaring off. As they went, they told Ben’s dad everything that had happened, bit by bit, from the star-piranhas to the giant octopus, from the car chase with the melted men to the commandos’ striptease out in the west.

  John Brewer, for his part, listened with amazement, now and then glancing down at Ben, shaking his head in disbelief as one story followed another. And every time he looked down, Ben stared right back at him and nodded, as if to say, it’s all true!

  Ugly Pig was now trotting along with them, still a little under the weather, but recovering fast, now that he was away from the foul air of the sea rivers. It would be a few weeks before he did any head-butting, but at least he was alive. The twins, meanwhile, were talking to Sawyer.

  “Anyway,” Bad said to the fat melted man. “I’ve seen you eat, and it’s not a pretty sight. You heard of a balanced diet?”

  “Yeah,” Worse chipped in. “Easy on the carbs, pile on the fresh fruit and veg. Now personally, I am a vegetarian. You can get all the proteins you need from cheese and grains and...”

  “What! You, a vegetarian!” Silver cried. “And since when did you two know about nutrition?”

  “Since when did you start thinking everybody else in the whole world was a complete moron? You think we’re a couple of dumb thugs!”

  “I don’t!” Silver said, thoroughly ashamed of herself. “Really, I don’t!”

  And she didn’t. Or not quite. She thought they were the bravest fools in the world.

  “And another thing, lard ass,” Worse said, ignoring Silver and returning to the question of Sawyer’s weight. “How much exercise are you getting? Because when you came running into the fair this morning, you were puffing like a choo-choo train. It’s all about keeping in condition!”

  On they went, the twins giving Sawyer a lesson in keeping healthy. And for his part, the melted man slowly began to think that perhaps they were right. Whatever he’d caught during the war, whatever illness had made him this way, he’d never fought against it. He’d just accepted it, because Sullivan had said so. He was melted, deformed, obese. Useless! All because Sullivan said so. And when Sullivan said something, everyone believed it.

  Not any more.

  As they travelled east, the air became cleaner, and the dark, dead earth showed signs of life. Finally, the land turned lush and green again, as the hateful stain of the Complex was lost on the earth.

  “Well,” Terra said, desperate to hear more from John Brewer about the years of his imprisonment, but hardly daring to ask, knowing how terrible it must have been. “Sullivan might have got away...” she put an arm around Jason, who walked alongside her, “but at least you all managed to keep the secret of the Island from him.”

  The twins looked at each other.

  “Ah...” said Bad, nervously. “I think... ehm, sorry, but...”

  “Oh, great!” Silver said, glaring at the twins. “That’s all we need!”

  “What?” said Coby. “You told him!”

  “It was an accident,” Worse said, angry with Coby, but angrier with himself. “He sort of tricked us into telling him. We didn’t mean to.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ben. “It doesn’t matter, now that we’re all together. Does it, dad?”

  He looked at his dad, who was gaining strength with every step, striding out along the road, with his son by his side, as if nothing could stop them now.

  “Ben’s right,” he said. “S
ullivan’s history. We’ll rest up at Terra’s house, then we’ll make our way to the coast, take the little red boat back to the Island and...”

  “Well...” said Ben.

  “What?” his dad asked.

  “We forgot to tell you that part.”

  But it was all right.

  They’d make it home. Somehow.

  END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Barlow was born in 1967 in West Yorkshire, England. He left school to become a musician, playing piano and organ in local bars and clubs. He then studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and after that post-graduate work at Hull University.

  He taught English for a number of years, but in 2004, the year in which his debut collection Eating Mammals was published, he moved to Spain to take up writing full-time. He currently lives in the Galician city of A Coruña with his wife and two sons.

  Apart from his own writing, he works as a ghost writer and journalist. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate.com, Penthouse and Departures Magazine, among others, and he is currently a feature writer for award-winning food magazine Spain Gourmetour.

  See more at: www.johnbarlow.net

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN BARLOW

  Hope Road (novel) US UK

  What Ever Happened to Jerry Picco? (novel) US UK

  Everything but the Squeal (travel/food) US UK

  Intoxicated (novel)

  Eating Mammals (3 novellas)

  Praise for John Barlow’s previous books

  “Barlow’s imagination appears unlimited, almost attuned to a parallel world.”—New York Times

  “John Barlow is back with another story that’s surprising, funny and satisfying… It’s the real thing.”—Washington Post