by David Moody
“You couldn’t see properly? You didn’t think it was worth checking before you did it?”
“It’s not my fault.” Ronan’s sobbing now, still holding on until Paul pushes him away.
Ronan staggers back and trips over Jayde’s feet. On his hands and knees now, only a couple of meters from the girl he’s just hacked down, he vomits with nerves. He wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve and uses a sturdy metal shelving rack to pull himself back up. A string of drool dribbles from his bottom lip.
Wait. He has a thought. A get-out clause.
“No one’s going to know, are they? No one’s coming here. No one’s going to care when so much else has happened.” His fight is beginning to return. “It doesn’t matter, does it? We’ll be okay.”
“It doesn’t matter? For Christ’s sake, Ronan, wake up.” Natalie glares at him, unable to believe what she’s hearing. “You just killed an innocent child.”
“No, we killed her,” he answers quickly, shirking responsibility and blame. “We’re all in this together.”
“We’ve not been together from the start,” Matt says.
“Yeah, and you’re the cunt who put an ax in her chest,” Paul adds, goading Ronan.
Natalie still can’t take her eyes off Jayde’s body. The teenager’s glazed eyes gaze upward unblinking. It hurts like hell, and she’d give anything for Jayde to still be alive, but she knows that what’s done is done and nothing anyone says or does will bring her back. To an extent, and it pains her to admit it, Ronan’s right. The loss of life shouldn’t be trivialized, but more important things are at stake here. “You’re all missing something,” she announces.
“What?”
“Louise is still alive.”
“Shit. So it’s back to plan A. We wait for her until morning, then get rid of her.”
“Not necessarily. We’ve got another option now.”
“You think?”
“Rod would never have left Jayde here on the island. Christ, he was bitter enough when he lost custody after his divorce. He’s one of those desperate custody dads now, you know? Clinging on to every second of time the court said he could have with her. I know he wouldn’t have let her out of his sight.”
“So what are you saying?” Matt’s worked it out already, but he wants to hear her say it.
“I’m saying that Rod must still be on the island too. He wouldn’t have left without her.”
“And if Rod’s still here…”
“Then so is his boat. I know we’re supposed to be waiting for Raj, but we might be able to get off this rock tonight.”
“But we checked down by the jetty earlier,” Paul says. “There was no boat down there.”
Natalie’s one step ahead of him as usual. “Think about it, though. He said he didn’t intend going back to the mainland, but he’d have wanted to keep his options open, wouldn’t he? He knows this island as well as any of us. Crafty bastard’s hidden the boat somewhere, I’m sure he has. We just need to find out where.”
“Ask him,” Matt says. “He’s here.”
An approaching silhouette. Thundering footsteps and gasping breaths. Rod’s distinctive shape appears in the doorway and he leans against the wooden frame, hopelessly unfit.
“Where is she?”
The corpse is concealed by the lack of light. He’s standing just inches from his daughter’s body, yet he remains completely unaware. Details are hard to distinguish in the gloom, and the circle of lamplight around the four huddled survivors makes everything beyond its reach appear darker still.
“We thought you’d gone.” Natalie’s panicking now, not sure what to say or how to say it. “We thought you’d gone back to the mainland.”
He’s not listening. “Where is she?” His voice fills the building, echoing off the walls and reverberating across the otherwise empty island.
Ronan cringes, thinking that the noise will bring the real killer out of hiding. He gestures for Rod to quiet down. Matt tries to call Ronan back, but he’s not listening.
“Please, Rod, don’t…,” Ronan whispers. “You don’t understand.…”
“Where’s my daughter? We were down by the beach. She heard you lot and saw the cottage on fire. She waited till I was asleep, then did a runner.”
Ronan moves closer to Rod to head him off and, by default, reveals everything they were trying to keep hidden. Rod looks down and sees Jayde’s lifeless face looking back up.
“Wait, please, we can explain.…” Ronan’s voice dries up to nothing.
Rod crumbles. On all fours now, he reaches out for his dead daughter, brain struggling to process. The ax sticks up from her chest like someone’s deliberately left it there for safekeeping. He touches the handle but can’t bring himself to remove it. Instead he runs his outstretched fingers down Jayde’s cheek—frozen but still warm—then looks up at Ronan. Rod appears unnaturally calm. No longer shouting. Voice barely even audible now. “Who did this?”
Neither by design or coordination, Paul, Matt, and Natalie have all moved back, implicating Ronan by default. For an endless moment no one speaks, but the insinuations are clear. Ronan makes eye contact with Rod, then almost immediately looks away again, unable to either hide his guilt or face the man whose innocent daughter he’s just slaughtered. His silver tongue and gift of the gab were often a blessing in business, allowing him to spin his way out of trouble and hide his failings through a haze of corporate babble and bullshit. Here, though, in this place and at this moment, his words are his undoing. He can’t help himself.
“Listen, Rod … you’ve got to understand … I didn’t know it was her. We didn’t know. We thought it was Louise.”
“Shut up, Ronan.” Natalie’s still backing away. “Just leave it.” She reverses into Matt, who stands his ground despite her best efforts to shove him along.
Rod still hasn’t budged.
“You have to believe me.” Ronan’s digging an ever bigger hole for himself and everyone else. “If we’d known it was Jayde, then—”
His nervous bullshit is abruptly truncated. Rod’s up on his feet and at him with remarkable speed. He’s older than Ronan and twice his size, but in a rush of adrenaline-charged surprise, Ronan manages to just about squirm out of his way.
Standing on the other side of the stores, Paul sees something that scares him more than anything else. He grabs Matt’s jacket and pulls him closer. “He’s got a gun. Rod’s got a fucking shotgun!”
Rod steadies himself and swings the weapon around. Slung across his back, the shotgun was difficult to see at first. Now it’s the only thing any of them are looking at. Natalie tries to sink even deeper into the shadows, but realizes Matt is gripping her arm. He squeezes tight. Too tight. For a split second the fear that he’s about to change into one of those inhuman Hater creatures is more frightening than the prospect of Rod with a shotgun, but when she raises her torch and makes eye contact, she knows they’re still on the same side. “We need to get out of here right now,” Matt hisses. “We need to find that bloody boat.”
Ronan rushes Rod and grabs the barrel of the shotgun, trying to wrestle it from his grip before he has a chance to take aim and fire. With them both distracted, Matt bundles Natalie out of the building and back into the night. Paul’s still focused on the two men now grappling on the ground in front of him, and it’s a couple more seconds before he realizes the others have gone. He follows without thought or hesitation. Thankfully Natalie’s still carrying her torch, and he follows the unsteady circle of light that’s now racing down the slope toward the beach. He shouts for them to wait, but his voice is lost in the incessant wind.
Matt looks back when he hears someone thundering after them. Natalie spins around too and shines the light into the gloom, terrified it’s Louise. With his pathetic vegetable knife held out in front of him, Matt readies himself for an attack, which doesn’t come.
“It’s me,” Paul says, and Matt relaxes slightly. “You fuckers, why didn’t you wait?”
“We need to find the boat,” Natalie answers, trying to keep them moving, not wanting to stand still.
“And were you going to tell me, or were you just planning on sailing off into the sunset together?”
“Grow up. We wouldn’t have gone without you.”
Paul’s not so sure. “You might.” He’s suddenly spoiling for a pointless fight. “You’ve been like a pair of frigging lovebirds all bloody night in the stores. Cuddling up to each other and whispering. I heard you. I reckon you’d have—”
He’s silenced by a gunshot. The three of them look back up the hill. The stores building they’ve escaped from is invisible, shrouded by darkness, but its approximate position can still be gauged by the location of what’s left of the bungalow. A plume of dirty smoke continues to drift up into the night, colored deep orange and given definition by a blizzard of glowing embers fueled by the wind.
Paul swallows hard. “Fuck. Ronan. You think we should help him?”
Matt doesn’t hesitate. “I think we’re too late.”
“Keep moving,” Natalie says, and this time no one argues.
A couple of minutes later, all they can hear is the crashing of the waves on the beach. They’re close to the jetty. Paul wastes no time in vocalizing his concerns. “We’ve already been down here. There’s no boat.”
“Yeah, but Rod said him and Jayde were down by the beach, remember?” Matt says. “And the boat has to be on the water or somewhere close, doesn’t it? We can work our way around the entire bloody coastline if we have to.”
“And that’s your great plan, is it?”
“I never said anything about having a great plan, but it’s just about all I’ve got right now.”
Natalie’s already down on the shingle. “Where you going?” Paul shouts after her.
“Anywhere but here. It’s open season, in case you hadn’t noticed. Nowhere to hide.”
Matt sprints to catch up with her, struggling to match her pace. “Nat, wait.”
She slows down, then turns back to face him. “We don’t have time to wait.”
“We need to think about this logically.”
“Logically? Fuck’s sake, since when did logic apply to anything that’s happened here?”
He ignores her. “Are there any other jetties?”
“Just this one.”
“Anywhere else where he could have moored the boat?”
“There are a couple of small coves, not far from where the ferry hit the rocks. Nothing north or west.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. Jesus. What, d’you think there’s one I’ve forgotten or a secret one I’m just not going to tell you about?”
Matt walks away. He’s frustrated, embarrassed, and scared. Just as he wants to stay hidden, the clouds overhead begin to break up, and just for a second the moon appears. The light reveals a tantalizing glimpse of their surroundings, for so long hidden in darkness.
Wait, he thinks. I remember this.
With his back to the water, the view here reminds him of first thing Monday morning. He stood alone here on the beach back then, waiting to go home, and played mind games—convincing himself he was the last man on Earth. He laughs to himself; he’s a lot closer to assuming that unwanted mantle now. But he didn’t want to be the sole survivor back then, and he definitely doesn’t want to be now.
Matt recalls the blissful ignorance of his work colleagues and the staff of Hazleton Adventure back then. How could things have gone so wrong? He recalls those last few moments of precious normality before Vanessa died and before the ferry was wrecked and before the others were killed.… He thinks back to the ordinary, mundane world he lived in with Jen before he ever set foot on Skek, and he wishes more than anything else he was back there again.
He remembers Paul coming down to the beach to look for him that morning, when all he wanted was to be alone. Where is Paul? Matt looks around for him, then stops.
Matt looks up at the rocks that rise up in front of him. The sky’s marginally lighter than the land, and he can make out the outline of the craggy headland. Beyond that, he can see the flat roof of the old weed-strewn army lookout.
“What’s the matter?” Natalie’s watching him staring into space.
“Just a thought.” With that, he’s gone. He heads back they way they just came. Natalie shouts after him again but he’s not listening.
Matt climbs up off the beach, ever aware of the threats still hiding in the shadows on Skek, and feeling more exposed than ever. The waves masked his noise while he was down near the water, but now that he’s moving away from the ocean again, every sound he makes seems to be disproportionately amplified. He feels like his every move can be heard for miles in all directions, like every step gives away his location to everyone and everything on the island with them.
“Matt, hold on,” Natalie says, but he’s not waiting for anyone. On his way up to the army lookout, he barges past Paul, and when Natalie catches up, Matt gestures for her to shine her torch inside.
“What’s going on?” Paul asks.
Matt leans back against the ruin of a building, relieved.
Inside is the boat.
For what it’s worth.
“It’s a life raft,” Natalie says. “It’s a frigging inflatable life raft. Are you serious?”
“Is that it?” Paul asks. “We’ll never get anywhere on that.”
“Well, Rod and his kid did,” Matt reminds them.
“You’re telling me the two of them sailed back here on that thing?”
“That’s exactly what happened. How else did they get here?”
“Reckon you can drive it?”
“You don’t drive a boat, you idiot, but, yeah, I reckon I can. We just need to point it in the right direction. I’ve got a compass. Should be okay.”
Paul remains seriously unimpressed by their discovery and finds it hard to mask his disquiet. Natalie leans in and shines the torch around the lookout as Matt climbs through the overgrown entrance around the back. The boat is short and squat nosed. It looks sturdy, but nowhere near big enough.
“We’re going to struggle,” Natalie says. “I reckon it’ll probably sink with the three of us on board.”
Matt doesn’t say as much, but he has a sneaking suspicion she’s right. He kicks and prods the boat’s rubber walls. “It feels pretty decent, though.”
He turns his attention to the outboard motor, but trips in the dark. Clothes are by his feet and sleeping bags too. Opened cans of food. A camping stove and an empty water bottle. He holds some of the detritus up to show the others.
“Christ, no wonder his kid did a runner if she was stuck hiding here with her old man,” Paul says. “You can’t blame her.”
“Give it a rest,” Natalie says. “Have a bit of respect.”
“What, respect for the psycho we just left waving a bloody shotgun at Ronan?”
“No, respect for his teenage daughter who didn’t deserve to die.”
“Give me the torch,” Matt says. She hands it over and watches as he checks the outboard over. He shines the light at his feet.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, immediately concerned.
“No key.”
“Rod had it. He mentioned it when he first turned up, remember? That morning in the mess hall?”
“I’ll just go and ask him for it then, shall I?” Paul sarcastically suggests.
“You do that,” she tells him.
Matt kicks the side of the dinghy in frustration, then leans back against the cold, damp wall of the lookout. “It’s like the closer we are to going home, the farther away it seems to get.”
“We’ve got other options though, right?” Paul says hopefully. “Rajesh will be back, won’t he? And there were more kayaks and paddles in the stores.”
“We could use the paddles with this, couldn’t we?” Natalie gestures at the boat.
“Possibly…”
Natalie senses Matt’s relu
ctance. “But?”
“But we really need to get that key. It’ll take us half the time to get home if we’ve got the engine, and half the effort.”
“So how do we do it?” Paul asks.
“We have to go and get it off him. There’s no other option,” Natalie says.
“He dies or we die.”
“Looks that way. Can’t imagine he’s just going to hand it over.”
That stark reality makes them all feel even more nervous.
“We’re not all going to make it to the morning, are we?”
“Way things are going, we’ll be lucky if any of us are left alive,” Matt says.
“But I thought we were the good guys.”
Natalie and Matt both look at Paul. His comment sounds remarkably innocent. Naïve. No trace of irony. “There are no good guys anymore,” Matt tells him.
Natalie agrees. “It’s survival of the fittest. Always has been, really. It’s just that we’re usually better at keeping the aggression in check. Usually.”
Paul swallows hard, realization hitting home. He has something to say, but he’s not sure how to say it. “So, are we the Haters? Think about it. The strongest survive. We all started on a level playing field. Most of us are dead, but the three of us are still alive. We saw others change, but who’s to say we haven’t changed too?”
Natalie chews over his words, knowing there must be some kind of logic buried in there somewhere.
Paul looks longingly at the boat. It’s more than a stolen rubber dinghy tonight, it’s a lifeline. It’s just about all they have left. Their only chance to get home. Some of them, anyway.
“Regardless of who’s what, I don’t see that we have any choice,” Matt says. “We have to find Rod, deal with him, get the key, then get the hell out of here.”
With that Matt exits the lookout. He’s nervous, terrified even, but he can’t let it show. He has an image of home and Jen in his head and nothing else left but a gut full of Hate.
SATURDAY
24
This naturally limited landscape feels impossibly vast tonight, and Paul, Matt, and Natalie are exposed by the lack of landmarks: no trees to hide behind, barely any buildings left to take shelter within and regroup. They’re vulnerable out here. Easy targets. Easy pickings.
