The Island

by Michael Bray

  The house was silent, the staff already making their way to the mainland to enjoy their weekend away. Lomar liked this time. Liked the solitude. He was the only person around for miles, and it suited him fine. He walked into the dining room, then through into his office. At the back of the room was another door. Loma opened it and stepped inside. A spiral staircase led down into the dark. He descended, taking his time. Motion sensing lights flicked on as he reached the foot of the steps. He looked at the room, smiling, feeling the first surge of adrenaline.

  It was an armoury of sorts. Weapons lined one wall, rack after rack of guns and knives of every conceivable type. To the right, was a large glass fronted wardrobe filled with clothing. Camouflage pants and jackets, boots and other survival equipment. The room also functioned as a gym. There was a weight bench and running machine, equipment to train his body to be the best it could be. There were no windows. He didn’t want them. He loved the private intimacy of the space. He loved how the room smelled. His secret place. He started to undress. Kicking off his Italian loafers, pulling off his jeans and unbuttoning his shirt. He glanced at the gym equipment, then turned away from it.

  Not today.

  Today he went to the glass-fronted wardrobe. He slid the door open and let his hand drift over the hanging clothes. He selected his favourites. Dark green with brown and black patches. Green vest. Jacket to match the pants. Brown boots. He dressed slowly, savouring the moment, enjoying the feel of the material on his skin. It wasn’t like the expensive suits he wore my some of the finest designers in the world. These were functional clothes. Itchy and rough fitting. They served a purpose. He fastened the boots. They were heavy, but also durable. Not as flimsy as loafers or sandals. Next came the weapons. His hunting rifle, his beloved Angela, named after his first wife. He was a good shooter. He had paid for the very best training. He selected his favourite things, and put them into the large carry bag on the floor. He was ready. He picked it up and went through another door. Down a short corridor. Into the elevator there, which took him to the roof. There, his helicopter waited, rotors spinning, charcoal bodywork sleek and dangerous looking. He tossed his bag into the back and climbed in, sliding the door shut. The helicopter took off, angling away from Necker Island, leaving Lomar’s luxury home behind. In the back, Lomar closed his eyes, listening to the steady thump of the rotor blades and visualising what was about to happen. He couldn’t wait to get started.

  TWO

  It was already hot. The terrain was rocky, but led mostly downhill, making progress easier than they could have hoped for. Unlike the jungle, it was dry and dusty. The river still accompanied them, although they could still hear the water somewhere off to their right. The rocky terrain was gradually growing on either side of them, forcing them into a natural channel of sorts, before winding away to the right, away from the sound of the river and putting the sun in front of them rather than behind. Chase led the way, Alex just behind them. Moses was in bad shape. He was at the back, limping along, wincing every time his left foot touched the ground. Chase wondered how much longer he would be able to last. The trail started to go uphill, a gentle curving natural path. It was hard going. Muscles burned with lactic acid, lungs sucked air, hearts thundered with the healthy beat of exertion. Chase checked his watch. They had been walking for four hours. It felt like at least double that. Ahead, the terrain seemed to level off. Chase glanced over his shoulder. “I say we stop up there and take a rest.” He gasped the words rather than said them. Neither Alex nor Moses protested. The top of the hill was further away than they expected, and it took them twenty more minutes to reach it. When they did, they came out on a sparse flat plateau of brown rock. The river which they had initially curved away from had reappeared, dropping from the edge of the cliff in a cascading waterfall some sixty feet below before continuing on its journey. There was no way they could go straight down. The cliff face was too sheer, and none of them had any climbing experience. A scrub of trees to their right morphed back into jungle, the way down steep, but passable. Chase sat down, letting his tired muscles rest. He was hungry, his stomach grumbling in complaint. Alex walked to the edge, peering down the vertigo inducing drop to the water below. He seemed to be remarkably fresh and least affected by the punishing conditions.

  “What’s the plan?” he asked, not turning away from the drop.

  “How should I know? I’m no different to any of you.” Chase was frustrated. He knew going back wasn’t an option. They needed food, which meant they would have to find means to hunt sooner rather than later.

  “I thought you were leading us somewhere,” Alex replied. There was no accusation in his voice. No real emotion of any kind. Chase wasn’t sure how to take it.

  “I led us here. Now we need to decide where to go next. By all means, you make that call.”

  Alex grunted and turned back to look at the waterfall just as Moses limped up the hill. He sat down hard and started to unfasten his boot. Chase watched him, saying nothing as he took it off, exposing a white sock which was now red on the heel.

  “Jesus,” Chase said. Alex glanced at it and turned away again.

  “It burst a mile or so back. Been walking in blood and pus ever since.”

  “Can you go on?”

  Moses looked at him, and then shrugged. “As long as you don’t expect me to climb down no cliffs.”

  “It looks like we can go around. Through the trees there, although it looks pretty steep.”

  “Steep I can handle. I just ain’t much of a climber. Arthritis in the hands.” Moses gently touched the shredded skin on his heel, then looked at Chase, squinting against the sun. “What are we going to do for food? Surely I’m not the only one who’s hungry.”

  “We need to find something to eat. Does anyone have any hunting experience?”

  Moses shook his head, preoccupied with his wounded foot. Alex didn’t acknowledge him. He had his binoculars out, scanning the terrain below them.

  “What about you?” Chase said. Alex lowered his binoculars. “Someone’s passed through that valley ahead of us.”

  Chase scrambled to his feet and stood beside Alex. “Where?”

  “Down there,” Alex said, handing Chase the binoculars. “There are fresh boot prints in the soft dirt by the river.”

  Chase looked, scanning over by the river bank. He could see footprints in the dirt, crossing back and forth. Two sets, one bigger than the other. “Ryder and Perrie,” Chase muttered.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did they get ahead of us?” Chase said, not really asking anyone.

  “Probably went right past the camp in the tree line. We wouldn’t have seen a thing as long as they were quiet. You see the other prints down there?”

  “To the right, coming out of the forest.”

  Chase panned to the right. The prints were clear. Three-toed in the wet earth. Two sets coming out of the tree line which they were due to enter in order to get down. Chase lowered the binoculars and handed them back to Alex.

  “Any idea what left those prints?”

  Alex shrugged as he put the chord for the binoculars over his neck, letting them hang against his chest. “How would I know?”

  “You seem to know a lot about this place.”

  “I don’t know what species they were. Could be anything. It looks like they were on the hunt.”

  “Ryder and Perrie?”

  “Who else,” Alex muttered. “With any luck they found them,” he added as he turned away from the edge and sat on a small rock near Moses.

  “Why would you say that?” Chase asked.

  “Why else? With them gone, that just leaves three of us. One in three is a lot better than one in five. I can handle those odds.”

  “You’re still playing the game,” Chase said, shaking his head.

  “Everyone is playing the game. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re out here. It seems everyone but you is playing, unless you’re just so good at it you have the rest of us fooled. I�
��m not sure yet.”

  “Ryder I couldn’t care less about. But that girl he’s with shouldn’t be here, she made a mistake.”

  Alex nodded, taking a swig from his water bottle. “She’s a dumb bitch who made a mistake, and now will probably pay for it with her life. Seems like poetic justice to me. Anyway, since it seems the three of us are sticking together for the time being, we need to find food and a way to protect ourselves.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Alex flashed a thin smile. “Why do you keep asking me things like I know the answers?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “To some things.”

  “Do you know the answer to this?”

  “To what?”

  “What we do next?”

  Alex shrugged. “We need to get down from here that much is obvious. Going back would take too long, so it looks like we walk or slide down there and try not to fall, break any bones of cut ourselves up on the rocks. Once we get down, we follow those tracks and see where they go.”

  “There are…things down there,” Chase said, still unable to bring himself to use the actual word.

  “If you mean dinosaurs, I think it’s safe to assume they’re everywhere. Another reason we need to find some way to protect ourselves.”

  Chase turned to Moses. He wasn’t looking so good. “You okay with that?”

  He nodded. “Just give me a minute to get my boots on and I’m good to go.”

  As soon as Moses was ready, Chase led them into the scrub of trees. The downhill incline was steep, and they were forced to cling on to branches and trees as they half-walked, half-scrambled down the first part of the steep hillside. The ground levelled out a little, and they pushed through more thick trees, pushing aside leaves, swatting aside bugs and baking in the humidity. Chase was in the lead, trying to ignore his hunger when he pushed aside a huge green leaf, and was in a clearing which glowed with sunlight. The others stood with him, none of them speaking. The trail sheared away into a sheer rock face reminiscent of the higher ground. It was smooth and without handholds. To their right. Half buried in the earth was a black maw, a cave entrance. They stared at it, then looked at each other. Their options were to either go back and try to climb back the way they had come, or venture into the cave. The entrance was huge, forty feet in diameter. Sunlight barely penetrated into the dark opening.

  “I don’t think I want to go in there,” Alex mumbled. It was the first sign of weakness he had shown.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Chase heard himself say, wanting no part of the cave system either. “Ryder and Perrie must have come this way and we know they made it.”

  “True,” Alex said, staring into the dark. “Let’s go then.”

  Although it was something he hadn’t wanted or asked for, everyone was waiting for Chase to make the first move. Reluctantly and with his inner voice screaming at him about how big a mistake he was making, he led them into the dark to whatever lay beyond.

  THREE

  The day was quickly swallowed as they made their way deeper into the cave. Each of them had been issued with ultraviolet lamps, thin strips of plastic which were stitched into the shoulder of their shirts, just above where their names were stencilled. When activated, the lamp would glow a dull blue for up to five hours on a standard charge. Now activated, the lamps cast the cave into eerie, shadow-heavy shades of blue as they carefully made their way down the uneven slope which twisted down out of sight. Their boots scrabbled for purchase on the loose gravel, the trio moving in silence into the unknown apart from the occasional grunt from Moses as his blistered feet continued to trouble him.

  “We seem to be moving away from the path of the slope, it doesn’t make sense,” Chase whispered, his voice still reverberating and rolling into the distance.

  “You need to think outside the box a bit more,” Alex replied. “Remember, this is a manmade island. It doesn’t have to follow nature’s rules. They can put things wherever they want to.”

  Chase almost slipped, grabbing at the wall to stabilise himself. “These are real rocks. This is a real cave.”

  Alex grinned, the expression ghastly in the harsh, artificial light. “But it’s not. They might be real rocks, but this wasn’t formed by nature. Just look at the walls. This was shaped by men with machines.”

  The cave narrowed as it curved away from where they wanted to go, the roof closing in on them and making their passage harder. They were forced to turn to the side as they continued to descend. Their path widened slightly, then Chase stopped moving.

  “What is it?” Alex asked, the passage still too narrow for him to squeeze around to see for himself.

  “Water,” Chase replied, moving forward a little into the wider section to allow the others to see. The cave opened into a circular pool which was around fifteen feet in diameter, its surface black and impenetrable in the gloom. The cave surrounded it on all sides apart from small head high section immediately ahead just above the water line.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to swim for it,” Chase muttered.

  “We could go back,” Alex said. Chase looked at him. There was no hiding it now, the fear. He was close to the edge.

  “To what? There’s no way to go without losing another day by going back to the river and crossing to the other side. Even if we did that, we know it terminates here. We have to move on.”

  “You don’t understand, I… I’m not so good with enclosed spaces. We don’t even know how deep the water is. Or what might be in there.”

  “I can’t go back, my feet…” Moses looked exhausted. He seemed to have somehow shrunk over the last few hours, his face thrown into ghastly relief by their lights. “You two do what you want, but I’m going on ahead.”

  “Your call, Alex,” Chase said as he took off his pack. “I’m going on with Moses.”

  “It could be a dead end. We might drown down there.” His cheek was twitching, and his foot tapped against the ground as he struggled to decide what to do.

  “Didn’t we all come here knowing we might die anyway? Like you said, it’s a man-made island. Chances are they left us a way out. Besides, Ryder and Perrie already came this way, remember?”

  “I suppose so,” Alex mumbled.

  “Alright, let’s do it,” Chase said. He crouched and put his fingers into the water. It was frigid. He started to unfasten his boots.

  “What are you doing?” Moses asked.

  “That water is cold. I’m putting my boots and socks in my bag, my shirt too. When we get to the other side, I’ll want something dry to wear. Our packs are waterproof. I’ll put my dry clothes in there then change on the other side.”

  “Good idea,” Alex said as he also started to remove his shoes.

  Moses shook his head. “If I take my boots off, I’ll never get them back on. My feet are in a bad way. Besides, I don’t want to risk getting infected.”

  “You will be cold when we reach the other side. We won’t have time to stop and light a fire.”

  Moses shrugged. “It’s hot out there. As soon as we are in the sun, I’ll dry before you know it.”

  Chase decided not to argue. He wanted to, then remembered that Moses was a rival, and in the way of him giving his daughter the life she deserved. He put his boots into his bag, then took off his shirt, removed the t-shirt from underneath and put that in with it, then sealed the waterproof backpack, ensuring the seals were completely closed. Finally, he put the shirt with his name stencilled on it back on so that he could use the light his UV torch provided. He waited as Alex did the same thing. Moses just stood by the edge of the water, face twisted into a grimace. Chase sat on the edge of the pool and dipped his bare feet into the water, gritting his teeth as the cold bit into him.

  “I’m going to lower myself down and see how deep it is,” Chase said as he rolled onto his front, bracing himself on his elbows on the edge as he lowered his legs into the water, it came up to his torso, then his chest before his feet found the floor.
The cold was intense, sharpening his senses. He could feel the thunder of his heart in protest at the sudden temperature change as he pulled his backpack in after him, the buoyant material bobbing on the surface. “Alright, I’m touching the bottom.”

  Alex looked at him, still afraid. “How tall are you?” he asked.

  “Six two. Why?” Chase replied.

  “I’m five nine. That water will come up to my chin.”

  “Nothing I can do about that,” Chase said. He no longer had the energy to play nice. Alex would either come along or he wouldn’t. Either way it was good to see him looking a little less confident. Moses was next. Like Chase, he lowered himself into the water, sucking air through his teeth as he too felt its frigid bite. Like Chase, the water went as high as his chest. The two of them bobbed there, waiting to see if Alex would join them.

  “This feels great on my feet. Nice and cool,” Moses said, even managing a smile.

  Alex looked back the way they had come, knowing it wasn’t on the cards. He looked from Chase to Moses, then rolled his bag into the water where it bobbed on the surface, waiting for him, then like Chase and Moses, he lowered himself into the pool. As he predicted, the water was much deeper for him and went up to his jaw. He breathed in large gasping breaths as he angled his head up towards the cave roof in order to keep it out of the water. He was panicking, but somehow able to keep control. Chase led them on, his hair brushing the cave roof as he made his way deeper, pulling his bag along my one of the straps. Moses was next in line, and seemed relaxed and at ease, still enjoying the relief as the chilly waters cooled his shredded feet. Alex kicked along at the rear, cheeks puffing in and out with each breath as he tried to keep his head above the water line. Every loose rock Chase’s feet touched, he thought was something in the water waiting to drag him under. Still they moved on. The walls narrowed again, so that they could no longer move forward three abreast and had to go single file, then side on. Now the cave was barely wide enough for them to traverse. Sharp rocks dug into their fingers as they pulled themselves further into the dark. Very gradually, the ground started to fall away. The water that was chest high on Chase was now up to his chin. He glanced over his shoulder to see how Alex was doing. He was treading water, his face turned up to the roof as he pulled himself along. Movement was becoming more difficult, and they had to physically pull themselves through the passageway. Stone pressed against their chests as they went on, the cave seeming to never end. There was no concept of direction anymore. There was nothing to give them any sensory indication of where they were. All they could do was keep moving. They all understood just how easy it would be to die there. A slip underwater combined with a movement into an unfamiliar area could lead to being trapped and unable to reach the surface.