by David Moody
“Do you think they care? Do you think poor old Frank’s going to give a damn if we’re stuck here and we’ve run out of fuel and food and you’re wearing a dead man’s coat to keep warm?”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“It’s exactly the point. Things have changed, Ronan. Priorities are different. All that matters is staying safe until Rajesh gets back, and you can make that as easy or as difficult for yourself as you like. As far as I’m concerned, though, none of the dead need any of this stuff anymore, but I do.”
With that, Matt returns to the dorm and starts turfing through his ex-colleagues’ belongings. It hurts, but it’s a necessity. He feels uncomfortable, uncharacteristically insensitive, but he makes himself do it all the same. It’s a relief when Natalie and Paul and then, reluctantly, Ronan start helping.
22
The inside of the bungalow has begun to resemble a landfill. It looks like it belongs to a hoarder. It reminds Matt of a documentary series he watched on Channel 4 one time, something about people who were addicted to collecting crap. He remembers one old guy having to climb and crawl over a mountain of newspapers each night to squeeze through a gap at the top of the doorframe to get to his bed. He thinks that old fella would have felt perfectly at home here in Stuart and Ruth’s place today. It doesn’t look like Stuart and Ruth’s place anymore. All traces of its recently deceased former owners are gone (all but a nasty dark patch of dried blood on the bedroom carpet), and Matt thinks that’s probably for the best. Ruth was a Hater, her husband one of her victims. The couple’s mutual demise is a terrifying snapshot of what this disease (condition, affliction, syndrome, predisposition, whatever) appears capable of.
Ronan’s at the window again. He’s been sitting staring at the same view for hours. “You okay, boss?” Stephen asks.
Ronan looks up after a few seconds. “Don’t call me that.”
“What?”
“Don’t call me boss. It’s not right. Not anymore.”
What’s he thinking? Matt wonders. He can’t imagine any of them going back home and returning to their jobs, and yet equally he can’t imagine Ronan without the office. He never talks much about his private life. Matt suspects it’s because he doesn’t have one.
Matt and Paul are separated from each other by a pile of unsorted clothing. It occasionally smells of the people who are no longer here. Paul’s been dozing on and off, but even though he still has his head bowed, he’s wide-awake now. Matt can see him messing with his hands in his lap. He’s nervously picking at the skin around the nail on his right thumb, has been for ages. It looks sore. Red raw. It’s bleeding now, but he keeps picking. He looks up, then looks down again fast. Matt wonders what he’s thinking. Is he scared of me? Does he think I’m one of them? Is he one? Am I? Matt stands up and stretches. He’s unsteady on his feet, and Paul flinches when Matt overbalances and unexpectedly moves toward him. “Just going to the toilet,” Matt tells him so he doesn’t panic and overreact.
The sun’s on the verge of beginning its daily descent. Matt slips past Natalie, who’s sitting close to another window, head buried deep in a novel she took from the shelf in the lounge as a distraction, desperately clinging to the last rays of light so she can keep reading. She acknowledges him with a grunt as he squeezes past.
“Maybe we should start up the generator?” he suggests.
“Good idea,” Ronan agrees from the other side of the room.
“Bad idea.” Natalie barely lifts her head from the page.
“Why? You won’t be able to read much longer if we don’t do something about the light.”
She looks across at Ronan in disbelief, dangling the book from the bottom corner of the front cover as if it were contaminated. “You think I’m interested in this? I’m only reading to try and forget where I am. No, we should leave the generator off for a while longer. We know where we all are, and no one’s going anywhere. We don’t have the fuel to waste.”
Ronan doesn’t look impressed.
“You scared of the dark?” Stephen asks, and from the way Ronan squirms and the expression on his oily face, Stephen thinks he might have struck a nerve.
There’s movement from the bedroom. It takes everyone by surprise, and there’s a momentary wave of nervous concern before they realize it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Rachel. She’s been sleeping for a while—lucky cow—but the noise the others are making has woken her up. She has a post-sleep expression on her face—part disorientation, part nausea. She beats Matt to the bathroom. The bolt slides across, sounding like a gunshot.
Matt trips over Stephen’s outstretched feet. There’s no bloody room in this cramped cottage anymore, and the reducing light levels only add to the confusion. Matt wonders if he should risk tackling Natalie about the electrics again. He’d happily volunteer to run over and start the generator up, if for no other reason than to get out of here for a few precious minutes.
“I’m hungry,” Paul says as he barges through to get to the kitchen, where he starts to ferret through the cupboards and haphazard piles of supplies left lying around. He finds something edible and dives in like a vulture.
Matt finally makes it to the toilet, swapping places with Rachel, who slinks back to the bedroom. Their voices are muffled, but he can hear the others talking through the closed bathroom door. He thinks he prefers the peace and quiet in here. Isolation. Four enclosed walls. A lock. A water supply. A seat. He’d happily spend the night here, if not the rest of his time on Skek.
“I found a candle,” he hears Paul say.
“Fantastic. That’ll make all the difference.” Stephen sighs sarcastically.
“At least I’m trying, mate.”
“What’s the point? So we can watch each other go out of our minds?”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“We can’t just give up.” Ronan’s distinctive nasal voice is grating. Matt wishes his hands were free so he could put them over his ears.
“I never said anything about giving up,” Stephen replies. “I’m just being realistic, that’s all. Your problem, Ronan, is you’ve always been too busy strategizing and crystallizing and blue-sky thinking to realize what’s actually going on right in front of your face.”
“That’s not true.”
“Stephen’s got a point,” Paul says. “The business was pretty much powered by your bullshit.”
“You ungrateful little shit. I took a chance on you and gave you a hell of an opportunity. I’m paying well over the odds for someone with your experience, doing the job you do.”
“Did.”
“Is that you handing in your notice?”
“You seriously think there’s a job to go back to?”
Ronan’s flustered. “You can’t quit. You’re fired.”
Natalie’s joining in now. “Are you two for real? I can’t believe this. How can you bicker about something so unimportant? Our lives are on the line here. Do you have any idea of the danger we’re facing?”
“Maybe we’re not facing any danger,” Ronan says from out of nowhere, spoiling for a fight. “Maybe it really is just a construct, just something we’ve built up out of thin air and bullshit. Christ knows there’s been enough of that flying around recently. There was nothing wrong when we left the mainland—nothing more than usual, anyway—but now we’re all talking like it’s the end of the world.”
“Haven’t we had this conversation already? You think the bodies on the boat were a fucking construct or whatever you want to call it? That’s just a convenient excuse you’re choosing to hide behind because you can’t handle the truth.”
Now Matt can hear several voices at once, all of them competing to be heard and none of them backing down. “You need to calm down,” he hears Stephen say. “Just take a breath and—”
“And what?” Ronan screams. “You think because I’m losing my temper that I’m going to start killing people? Are you all completely out of your minds?”
“Take it easy, Ronan,�
�� Paul shouts back, and Matt holds his breath and waits for the inevitable explosion. He’s trying to work out his exit strategy. It was only ever a matter of time before someone cracked under the pressure.
Is this it? Is this how it ends? Hiding in a toilet while my ex-colleagues go on the rampage?
He leans against the door, both to stop anyone from getting inside and also so he can listen and work out what’s happening without risking going out there himself.
If I wait here long enough, they might all kill each other.… He imagines being the only one left alive on the island, alone but finally safe.
A crash of movement. A sudden desperate commotion—people trying to get out of the way. More noise as something—someone?—is knocked over.
“Back off, Paul,” Matt hears Natalie plead.
“Tell this little fucker to stand down first.”
“You can’t talk to me like that,” Ronan yells.
“I’ll talk to you how I fucking well like.”
Each voice is progressively louder than the last. No one’s backing down.
Matt knows he can’t stay in here indefinitely.
Heart thumping.
Pulse racing.
Deep breath.
He lets himself out of the bathroom and immediately dives in to separate Ronan and Paul. He drags Ronan one way, while Natalie pushes Paul in the other direction. “Get a grip, you moron,” she tells him. He tries to push her away, but she’s got a height advantage and she pins him against the wall. “He’s not worth it.”
“Get off me,” Paul yells.
“No fucking chance.”
Matt’s blocking Ronan. He’s fractionally calmer. He peers around Matt and Natalie to try to work out Paul’s next move. “Leave him,” Matt warns.
“You think I’d waste my energy?”
“I’m not interested. Just pull yourself together and calm down, you damn idiot. Don’t you think we’ve got enough to worry about without—”
He stops talking when the tiny box of a house is filled with a different noise. It’s coming from the bedroom.
Stephen and Rachel are grappling with each other in the doorway. Matt has no idea why they’re fighting at first. Stephen looks like he’s trying to get past, while Rachel’s intent on stopping him from getting through.
Wait?
Is Stephen trying to stop Rachel getting out?
Through a momentary gap between them, Matt sees something that makes his blood run cold.
The kid Louise.
She’s on her feet.
Wide-awake and alert.
He only sees her for a fraction of a second, but it’s long enough. She stands perfectly still, glowering and breathing hard. Her entire frame, though deceptively slight, seems to rise and fall with each deep, juddering breath. She looks as bloodied and beaten as when they first found her, but her intent is clear. She’s ready to fight. To kill.
Now the chaos makes sense. Stephen’s trying to stop Louise from getting out, and Rachel’s trying to stop him getting anywhere near Louise. He barges Rachel out of the way, but she’s up and at him again almost immediately. Behind her, Louise crouches, then pounces, but the electrical flex is still tied around her ankle. She leaps up into the air at Stephen but crashes back down when the cord reaches its limit. She hits the floor hard, nose bloodied.
Natalie’s in the hallway, ready to dive in and try to stop the fighting, but Matt grabs her arm and pulls her back. She reacts badly, spinning around and unloading on him instead, trying to get him off her. He dodges her flailing fists but wraps his arms around her torso and drags her toward the front of the cottage.
Louise is unsteady but back up on her feet, blood pouring from her busted nose. She sways ominously, and he can’t tell if she’s about to attack or collapse. His view is obscured and he’s still trying to get both Natalie and himself a safe distance away, but a bottleneck is behind him now as Paul and Ronan fight with each other to get out of the cottage first. They’ve both got armfuls of stuff and are wedged in the narrow hallway. Paul needs Ronan to move so he can get past, but Ronan’s overloaded and he’s stuck.
Natalie can tell from the expression on Matt’s face that their worst fears have been realized. She stops struggling and turns back around, just in time to see Stephen shove Rachel away, then punch her in the gut when she comes at him again. Winded, she staggers back. She almost falls over Louise, who’s on the floor now, trying to chew through the electrical flex.
“He’s got a gun,” Natalie says, but no one’s listening. She watches helpless as Stephen aims a flare gun at Rachel, then fires at her from point-blank range. The graying shadows of early evening that filled the bungalow instantly disappear in a haze of white-hot red-tinged light. The flare hits Rachel just below her breastbone, embedding deep in her flesh, and the force of the impact sends her tripping back. She claws at her already-burning clothes, trying to scratch out the bloom of incandescent flame that’s rapidly consuming her. Her clothes shrivel and melt, fusing to her skin. Hair withers away to nothing.
Yet she continues to fight.
Is she a Hater too?
It’s as if the pain and inevitability hasn’t yet registered. What’s left of Rachel knocks Stephen off his feet. He hits the bedroom door with the back of his head and collapses against it, slamming it shut. As it closes, Matt catches a glimpse of Louise springing into action amid the fire and fury.
She’s free now. Unstoppable. She scrambles over Rachel’s burning bones to get to Stephen, desperate to be the one who makes the kill.
The four who remain on the other side of the door stand motionless in the hallway, numbed by what they’ve just witnessed. The speed of it. The ferocity. The finality.
“We have to help them,” Ronan says instinctively, nervously, but all the time he’s backing farther and farther away.
“They’re beyond help,” Matt tells him.
The shattering of glass is like an alarm. As the bedroom window blows out with the unbearable heat and that part of the building is filled with fresh flame, Natalie springs back into life. “Get what you can and get out,” she shouts. “Now!”
There’s no time to argue, for once. Ronan, Matt, Paul, and Natalie move quickly and cooperatively to save as much of their supplies as possible. They form a human chain and dump everything they’re able to rescue in a heap in front of the cottage, but they quickly realize more distance is required. Matt makes another frantic dash inside for more, but the cottage is rapidly filling with noxious smoke. The heat is rising in intensity, climbing by the second. There’s no way anyone’s left alive in the bedroom.
He snatches up another rucksack. He doesn’t care whom it belonged to or what’s in it. There’ll be time to worry about that later, he hopes. He notices that the wood paneling is beginning to bubble and blister. Wallpaper is starting to curl and burn. They’ve stacked up so much combustible stuff in this tiny little building that the fire is spreading with astonishing rapidity; the heat is so fierce that it scythes through the air like an invisible hand, igniting everything it touches, jumping from place to place. After dumping another load of gear out front, Matt tries to go back one final time, but doesn’t make it farther than a couple of steps before Natalie grabs the collar of his jacket and pulls him back in the other direction. He stands in the middle of the garden with his hands on his knees, coughing his guts up, lungs full of smoke.
It’s raining hard out here again, the morning’s brightness long forgotten. Everything they’ve managed to salvage is ruined. The ground has been churned to mud. The four of them stand back in a ragged line, silent and numb, and watch the fire consume the entire building. It’s unstoppable. Inevitable. “We’re screwed,” says Ronan, and as the roof of the bungalow collapses, sending a cascade of sparks and embers spiraling into the darkening sky, the others can’t help but agree. Matt thinks the fire would be impressive to watch if the implications weren’t so completely fucking terrifying.
“Now what?” asks Paul.
“Get the stuff we’ve got under cover, then find somewhere to spend the night.”
“Two buildings left,” he says. “Both full of corpses. Nice.”
“I reckon we head for the stores this time,” Natalie suggests. “The bodies there will be easier to move out into the open. What do you reckon, Matt?”
Matt’s not listening. Instead, he walks around the edge of what’s left of the bungalow, the fierce heat forcing him to keep his distance. He reaches the charred black hole in the wall at the back of the ruin where the bedroom window used to be. He can see straight through into the inferno inside. It’s a pointless, cursory inspection that he’s carrying out for his own benefit, but he covers his mouth and nose and tries to count the bodies. Despite the dancing flames and the heat haze and the smoke, he can still make out definite shapes in there. The outline of the frame of the double bed. What’s left of a wardrobe. There’s just a single corpse, its presence given away by its instantly recognizable form: sticklike limbs, the curve of the spine, the butterfly-shaped pelvis. Its size dictates that it has to be either Rachel or Stephen. It lies facedown, barely distinguishable in color from the burned carpet and charred floorboards. Wasted. Brittle and awkward.
“Matt, come on,” Paul yells.
“Wait.”
“Fuck’s sake, mate, we need to get a move on.”
But Matt’s not about to be hurried. Natalie senses there’s a problem. She drops the kit she’s just picked up and heads over to where he’s standing. The heat is ferocious here and she can feel her face beginning to prickle and burn. “What’s the matter?”
“Only one body.” He starts looking at the ground near his feet for footprints and clues. Natalie follows him as he walks farther from the ruin, eyes stinging from the smoke, struggling to see anything in the gloom.
“Matt, come on…,” she says, but he’s not listening. “What difference does it make?”
He speeds up. He’s seen something.
A shape is on the grass a little farther ahead, and he breaks into a slow run to reach it. It’s another body. Badly burned, but not as far gone as the one trapped in the cottage. Enough flesh and bulk remain for him to make an easy identification. It’s Rachel. “Jesus Christ.” He crouches down to inspect her corpse. He covers his mouth and nose. The smell is appalling. “Poor bitch.”
