One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning

by David Moody

  “The boat ran aground on the east of the island. By the time we got anywhere near them, it was too late.”

  “How?”

  “Killed. Murdered. Those that didn’t drown.”

  “We got the little bastard that did it, though,” Paul adds.

  Matt watches Rod’s face as he absorbs the news. There’s none of the shock Matt expected to see, no disbelief, just a strange look of acceptance and a nonchalant nod of the head. “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you?”

  Rod takes his time to answer. “It’s spreading like an epidemic back home.”

  “What is?” Ronan asks.

  “The violence … the killings.”

  “So is it terrorists or something like that?” asks Paul.

  “I wish it was that simple. No … this is different.”

  “Did that kid look like a terrorist yesterday?” Frank asks. “Come on, Paul, get a grip.”

  “How am I supposed to know? He might have been radicalized. He looked the type.”

  “The type?” Rajesh says, appalled. “What’s that supposed to mean? Do I look the type as well? I’m Muslim, mate, I reckon I probably tick more of your boxes than that kid did.”

  “Nah, I’m thinking he was like one of those loners who go apeshit. Remember that guy in Norway?” Paul looks at Nils as he speaks, digging himself an ever-bigger hole.

  “I’d shut up if I was you, Paul,” Gavin warns. “Quit while you’re ahead.”

  Rod raises his voice and silences the chatter. “It’s not terrorists.”

  “What then?”

  Another pause. Rod’s struggling to explain the inexplicable. “This is different. There hasn’t been anything like this before. It’s not terrorism, it’s not radicalization or extremism or whatever you want to call it, it’s … it’s random.”

  “Random?” Rachel repeats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. No one knows. It’s hard to describe.”

  “Well, try,” Ronan says angrily. “Two of my staff have died while in your company’s care.”

  In a measure of how used to death Rod seems to have become, he doesn’t even ask how. He accepts news of these further fatalities with another resigned nod of the head. “Where are their bodies?”

  “In the stores,” Stuart tells him. “Some of them, anyway. Didn’t seem a lot of point trying to get the rest of the kids off the boat. We’ll leave that to the specialists when they get here.”

  “No one’s going to come,” Rod says quietly.

  “What?”

  “I said, no one’s going to come. Stuff like this is happening everywhere.”

  “What do you mean ‘stuff like this’?” Matt asks.

  Rod’s distracted, struggling to process everything. “You said you dealt with the killer.” He looks at Paul. “What did you mean? Have you got him locked up? Christ, if there’s one of them here, then we have to—”

  “He’s dead,” Nils interrupts, keen to reassure his boss. “I killed him. It was all he deserved.”

  “Good. And I know that sounds wrong, but I reckon it was most likely the only option you had.”

  “Damn right it was,” Nils agrees.

  “What’s the supplies situation like?” Rod looks around until he picks out Ruth’s face in the crowd.

  “Pretty grim,” she tells him. “Pretty much nonexistent, if I’m honest.”

  He nods and thinks. “I thought as much. How long can we last?”

  “Depends how many of us are still standing,” Paul says.

  Rod ignores him.

  “A week at the most,” Ruth answers.

  “But we’ll be home well before then, won’t we?” Ronan asks, sounding nervous. Rod just looks at him, and when he doesn’t give any reassurance, Ronan pushes further. “You’re responsible for what happens here, don’t forget that. It’s your name on the paperwork, Hazleton. You have to do something. You can’t just sit back and do nothing. You need to get me and my people back to the mainland before—”

  “We’re going nowhere.”

  “But you can’t just—”

  “I abdicate all responsibility,” Rod says, cutting across Ronan. Rod’s voice is louder yet bereft of emotion. “Sue me, bankrupt me, sell your story to the papers … do whatever you want. None of it matters now.”

  “For Christ’s sake, all this is irrelevant,” Matt snaps, his voice full of uncharacteristic anger. The rest of the group turn and look at him, shocked by his sudden outburst. “Look, I’m sorry, but we need to know what’s happening on the mainland. You’re sitting there telling us we’re going to starve or stay stranded out here and that it’s okay that Nils killed a child.… If that kind of thing is acceptable now, then what exactly is going on back home?”

  Rod takes his time to answer. “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. This isn’t a disease, it’s not an infection or anything like that. It’s not political or religiously motivated. It’s like some kind of mass psychosis … a contagious delusion if you like.”

  Ronan balks. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “That’s because the whole fucking world has stopped making sense,” Rod immediately replies. He tries to speak again but then stops. Another pause. A moment for composure. Juddering inward breath and long exhale. “When I heard about Jayde’s mother, I didn’t make the connection at first. I was so focused on what had happened, on getting my daughter to safety, that I just didn’t think. It was only once I’d seen the senseless brutality of what her mother’s partner had done that I started to realize how fucked-up everything was getting.

  “You don’t even realize it’s happening at first. You get so used to seeing stuff like this on the news … murders, fanatics, beheadings, shootings … it seems almost normal, like you’re immune. It’s only when it starts affecting you that you realize something’s seriously wrong. Jayde’s mother lives—lived—near Carlisle. I decided to drive Jayde down to the flat in Bristol because I had some business there first thing Monday. It was late and we were looking for somewhere to stop. We were heading for a hotel I’ve used a couple of times before, but there were police swarming all over the place and we couldn’t get anywhere near.

  “We eventually found somewhere to stop—this little B and B at the back end of nowhere—and I didn’t think anything more of it. I was too busy thinking about Jayde to give any thought to anything else. Next morning we’d only gone about twenty miles before we hit another snarl-up. The roads were gridlocked. Same kind of thing again … police everywhere. Army too. There was a massive pileup north of Manchester ’cause some idiot had driven the wrong way down the motorway. By that stage I wasn’t joining up the dots. I was still thinking, ‘It’s just bad luck.’ But then we saw it for ourselves firsthand, didn’t we, love?”

  Jayde continues to stare straight ahead, her expression unflinching. Natalie still holds her hand in hers, gently stroking it. Natalie squeezes until Jayde makes eye contact, then mouths, You okay? Jayde nods, but it’s clear she’s far from all right.

  Stuart voices the question everyone wants to ask. “What exactly did you see, Rod?”

  “I’m freezing. Can I get another drink?” Rajesh fetches Rod a coffee. He sips it gingerly, wincing at the heat and the bitter taste. “We realized it was going to take us a while to get to Bristol, so we stopped for something to eat. So we were just sitting there, eating breakfast and keeping ourselves to ourselves, when…” Rod pauses, barely able to keep a lid on his emotions, the wounds still raw. He looks around at the circle of faces. “We were sitting in a booth right over in the corner farthest from the door, and thank Christ we were. They had these big, tall plastic-backed seats so no one could see us. I just wanted some quiet, you know? Just a bit of head space. Anyway, I was looking at the paper and Jayde was checking her phone and … and it was just surreal. It happened so fast we didn’t realize until it was done. There was a girl working behind the counter, cooking on a grill, and she just snapped. And it’s not like s
he suddenly lost all self-control and went crazy.… This was different. She was controlled. She knew exactly what she was doing. You could see it in her face.…”

  “See what in her face?” Natalie asks.

  “Fear. Absolute bloody terror like there was some great conspiracy against her. I was watching her out of the corner of my eye. She had a knife, but I never thought she…”

  He stops speaking. Drinks more coffee. Hands shaking with nerves.

  “Go on, Rod.”

  “I had my back to the rest of the restaurant, but I knew something was wrong. So I stuck my head out around the side of my seat, and the girl was standing right in the middle of the restaurant with the knife. I was trying to work out what it was that had freaked her out.”

  Jayde pulls her hand away from Natalie, gets up, and walks to the other end of the room and stands at the window, staring out at nothing. Natalie goes to follow her, but decides against it. Jayde looks back. Natalie smiles at her fleetingly, but she doesn’t react.

  “She didn’t look that much older than Jayde,” Rod continues. “Fresh out of college, probably. She just started attacking the people in the restaurant around her, hacking at anyone who got in her way. There was a couple sitting in a bay not far from us, and she went for both of them without a word of warning. The guy had his back to her, and I watched her just thump the knife down in the middle of his back and yank it out again. Right between the shoulder blades. He reacted like she’d punched him. Didn’t even realize he’d been stabbed. She pushed him out of the way, then dived across the table to have a go at his missus, and she was just slashing at the woman’s chest again and again. Must have sliced her six or seven times before she stopped and moved on to the next one.”

  “And did no one stop her?” Frank asks. “Surely someone must have done something?”

  “One bloke did. Dumb hipster tree hugger he was, all sandals and tweed and this big bushy beard. He tried to talk her down and get the knife off her, but he didn’t stand a bloody chance. She was savage, I tell you. An absolute fucking maniac, but still with enough control to know exactly what she was doing. The bloke tried to wrap his arms around her from behind, but she got one arm free and stabbed him in the leg. He started screaming and went down, and by the time anyone could react, he was on the floor and she was kneeling on his chest stabbing him again and again, shredding him to ribbons.

  “By then the noise was pretty bloody terrible … people screaming and running and trying to get away. I dragged Jayde down onto the floor and we hid under the table. I knew that if that girl saw us, if she knew we were there, she’d have killed us too. You could see it in her face, clear as anything, but she was acting like she was the one who was in danger. I could hear people screaming at her to stop and she was screaming back at them, and I knew I couldn’t risk doing anything to help because if I tried, then she’d have…”

  Rod stops. His words dry up.

  “So, basically, what you’re saying is we’re fucked,” Gavin says.

  “Not as long as we stay here.”

  “Other than the fact we’ll starve to death,” Paul reminds them.

  “It explains why we haven’t been able to get through to anyone on the radio,” Ruth says.

  “No one?”

  “No one of any worth.”

  “They’re probably too busy trying to stay alive themselves to give a shit about what’s happening out here,” Rod mumbles.

  Paul’s not convinced. “Wait a second, let’s see if I’ve got this right. You’re saying that ordinary people have started just flipping out and killing each other when they feel like it.”

  “I know how it sounds,” Rod says, “but, yes. That’s exactly what’s happening.”

  No one argues, and the lack of any response seems to hammer home his point. “It fits,” Natalie says. “It’s the best explanation we’ve got for what happened to the kids on the boat. It’s the only explanation, come to that.”

  Frank’s not buying it. “Bullshit. That’s no explanation at all.”

  “It’s not bullshit,” Stephen says from the back of the group, his voice low and nervous. “I told you. Natalie’s right. The exact same thing happened here and on the boat. I told you all but you wouldn’t listen. Vanessa attacked me. I didn’t do anything to her.”

  “Who’s Vanessa?” Rod asks.

  “One of my staff,” Ronan explains. “She fell from the cliffs.”

  “She was pushed,” Rachel sneers, unable to help herself.

  “You lot were quick enough to lynch that kid yesterday,” Stephen argues, marginally louder and increasingly confident now. “So if you believe he killed Joy and all those others on the ferry, why won’t you believe Vanessa was trying to kill me?”

  “Because you two had history,” Rachel quickly retorts. “We all knew it. You had it in for her.”

  “I wanted her job, sure, but not enough to kill for it.”

  “All right, all right, cut it out,” Stuart says. “Carry on, Rod. So what happened after the restaurant?”

  “We waited under the table for forever, until I thought it was safe to move, then got ready to try to make a run for it. Except we didn’t need to run, ’cause by then we were the only ones left. Everyone else was either dead or gone. There was blood everywhere. We got outside and the place was in chaos. The car park was half-empty and some prick had totaled my car trying to get away, so we just walked.”

  Matt’s not satisfied. “You’re not telling us much we haven’t worked out for ourselves already.”

  Rod glares at Matt, then looks at the others, still searching for familiar faces. “It’s as much as anybody knows. It’s all connected … but at the same time there are no connections. These people act like someone’s flicked a switch. One minute they’re normal, the next they’re batshit fucking crazy. It makes no sense, I know. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t.”

  “It’s got to be people just copying each other, hasn’t it?” Ronan suggests. “Like those riots a few years back, remember? It all kicked off in London, then a few nights later it was Manchester, then Birmingham, and before you knew it, you’d got trouble in every major city up and down the country. I remember being stuck in the office with a crowd of bloody maniacs outside. Thought I was going to lose everything that night.”

  Rod’s shaking his head. “I know what you’re saying, but this is different. The things these people are doing … it’s not like looting a TV from a smashed shop window because your mates are watching and posting a picture on Twitter, these people aren’t stealing or smashing things up, they’re killing. It’s brutal. They’re unstoppable. It’s like they have to kill.”

  “But there has to be some kind of connection, doesn’t there?” Ruth says, siding with Ronan. “It can’t really be as random as you’re making it sound, can it?”

  “That’s exactly how it is. No rhyme or reason, Ruth. If there is a connection, no one’s saying anything. It’s hell out there, though. It’s like there’s two kinds of people now. There’s normal people like us, and there’s them.”

  “Haters.” Jayde’s still standing by the window, keeping her distance, but she turns around to face the group. “They’re calling them Haters. I seen it on the TV.”

  Paul can’t help himself. He laughs out loud. “Haters! Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me. Isn’t that some shitty American street slang or something? Might as well call them Thugz spelled with a zed … or a zee if you want to be really fucking pedantic about it.”

  “You laugh all you like,” Rod says. “You wouldn’t be so glib if you’d seen what we’ve seen.”

  “You’re forgetting, mate, I have seen it. I was standing on that boat with Natalie, Nils, and Rajesh yesterday, surrounded by corpses.”

  “Then you should have more respect and be less of a gobshite,” Rod tells him.

  “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m the bloke who owns this place, an
d actually you do have to stand here and listen to this. What else are you going to do? Where you gonna go?”

  Rachel moves closer to Rod. “You need to get us off this bloody island. I need to get home to my daughter. Ronan’s right, it’s your responsibility. We’re your responsibility.”

  Rod leans back in his chair. “Not anymore.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, incensed.

  “I don’t care what any of you do, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going back to the mainland, not for a long time. Not until whatever’s going on over there has sorted itself out.”

  “Things aren’t going to get back to normal,” Jayde says, suddenly much more animated. “Don’t you get it?”

  “Maybe she’s got a point.” Matt immediately regrets speaking as he’s become the center of attention. He wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m not staying here,” Rachel says. “I can’t.”

  “Bad news, love,” Gavin says quickly. “Have you not been keeping up? There’s no way we’re getting off Skek. The boat’s fucked, remember?”

  “How did he get here then?” She points at Rod. She gives Gavin half a second of silence to think, then answers for him. “Was he dropped here from a height? Did he tunnel under the ocean and dig his way here?”

  “Yes, I’ve got a boat,” Rod says, “but it’s not big enough for all of us.”

  “I’m not bothered about all of us,” Rachel says.

  “Did you not hear what I said? I’m not going back.”

  “And did you not hear me?” Rachel yells at him. “I’m going home. I’ll take your damn boat myself if you’re not going to use it.”

  “The boat stays here. We’ll need it eventually.”

  “But you just said you’re staying here.”

  “My boat, my rules.” Rod takes a key from his jacket pocket and dangles it in front of her. “Anyway, you need this to start the motor, and do you know anything about navigation? Point yourself the wrong way and you could end up anywhere. You’ll die drifting out to sea.”

  “I’ll take someone with me who knows.”

  “Listen to me, you silly bloody girl, it’s too dangerous to go back.”