The Last Resort

by Susi Holliday

  Lucy

  Scott limps towards the entrance and taps his tracker, shouts: ‘We need help here, you bunch of sick fucks!’ He stays there, staring out into the darkness.

  ‘Giles, Tiggy and now Brenda. We’re dropping like flies.’ Lucy’s voice is still wavering slightly. She’s embarrassed about her breakdown, after she’d told her story to Amelia and James. Thankfully, they were sympathetic – as much as they could be, under the circumstances. She’s been living with this for long enough. Having a couple of people know her secret doesn’t change it. It’s still a secret. It’s still the thing that coats her heart, making it impossible for her to form any kind of bond with anyone, or anything, ever again. She’d bought a dog – a small terrier cross-breed – thinking that having something in her house that relied on her might help her come to some sort of peace within herself. But the dog had seen right through her. Shied away from her touch. It was back in the dog’s home before the week was out, and she hadn’t even given it a name, other than ‘Dog’ – which to someone with a functioning heart might have come across as cute and ironic. But it just reminded her that she was too hardened to even find affection for an animal, much less earn any in return.

  She looks around the cave at the sorry bunch she’s been lumbered with, and wonders what the point is anymore. She should walk out of here right now. Walk to the end of the island, where that crumbling lighthouse stands, and throw herself into the sea.

  No one is going to mourn the death of a cynical, washed-up gossip columnist.

  Amelia clears her throat. ‘Brenda is going to be fine.’

  It’s obviously a lie. Brenda’s leg is festering before their eyes, and her temperature is so high Lucy can feel the heat radiating from four feet away.

  She wants to say that she doesn’t think Brenda is going to be fine, and that neither are the rest of them, but she decides to change tack. ‘You know, I’m thinking we all need to sue the organisers of this thing. Once we get out of here. The invite said “luxury”, and here we all are, huddled together in a cave. Sheltering from the rain while one of us battles a serious infection. Two of our party are gone and we don’t know where . . .’

  ‘I think Giles and Tiggy are being looked after,’ James says. ‘I want to believe that, at least.’

  ‘It didn’t work out so well for anyone who went to Fyre Festival though, did it? Thousands of dollars for supposed luxury, but they ended up with collapsing tents, their belongings looted, barely anything to eat . . .’

  ‘We didn’t pay for this though, did we?’ Amelia says. ‘We were all willing to come here and be pampered for free. We’ve all got our reasons for being here. We all hoped to get something out of it.’

  ‘Sure,’ Lucy says. ‘I tried to check them out, remember? I told you all this. There was nothing on their website. Nothing at all in any search engines. It’s like Timeo doesn’t even exist, or if it does, they’re keeping themselves way below the radar—’

  ‘You saw the presentation.’ James raises his palms. ‘That’s the whole point of them. They make stuff and sell the copyright. They don’t want people to know who they are. These tech companies with all their innovations need to sell the dream that they’ve invented their own products. They assign credit to the people they want to assign it to – the people that are the best “fronts” for the company. In fact’ – he pauses, takes a breath – ‘I’m pretty impressed. All the things that Timeo has come up with—’

  ‘But how do we even know it’s true?’ Lucy says. ‘How do we know anything is true? You know . . . Giles looked pretty dead to me, lying face down in that inlet.’ She nods at Amelia. ‘But you say they told you on the beach that he was going to be looked after?’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t trust a word they say. They’ve forbidden us from sharing things with each other, unless on their say so, and now they’re picking us off, one by one . . .’

  Brenda’s eyes fly open and she cries out in pain. Then she murmurs something, too quiet and garbled for them to make sense of. Her eyes close again.

  ‘Brenda?’ Amelia crouches again and wipes the woman’s brow. ‘Stay with us. We’ll be home soon.’ She turns round to the others. ‘Did anyone ask for help yet?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Amelia,’ Lucy spits. ‘No one is going to help us.’

  ‘OK, OK, let’s calm down,’ Scott says, limping back to the group and lowering himself to the ground. ‘I asked already. Didn’t you hear me over by the entrance?’ He taps his tracker and yells at the roof of the cave. ‘OK, guys, the fun’s over. Maybe you didn’t much like me cursing at you before, and I am real sorry about that, OK? But Brenda really needs your help. In fact, I think we all do. Can someone come and get us now? Please?’

  Another scream of pain from Brenda, and she sits bolt upright. ‘The island! I remember, I remember. No, no, no, no, no! Cornwall – I was there . . . so long ago. On the news . . . a man died . . . a child gone. All the stories . . . scared. Everyone scared . . .’ Then she closes her eyes and collapses back onto the floor.

  Amelia leans down and grabs her by the shoulders. ‘Brenda? What are you talking about? Are you OK? Answer me! I want to help you—’

  ‘Of course she’s not OK,’ Lucy says. ‘She’s got a fever that will probably kill her, if the infection doesn’t shut down her organs first. She’s out of her mind. She doesn’t know who she is, never mind who you are. Or where we are. Cornwall? We’re not in bloody Cornwall.’

  Amelia pulls away and sits down hard on the cave floor. She looks scared, and Lucy is intrigued. Something Brenda said has triggered something. She wonders what Amelia’s secret is, but without the embedded tracker there’s a good chance they’re not going to find out.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Lucy says, ‘aren’t the Scilly Isles near Cornwall?’

  ‘Yes,’ James says. ‘Of course. Some of them are uninhabited too, I think. I mean, I don’t know, but I’m guessing this could be one of them. But I haven’t seen any boats nearby, and that island you can see from the lighthouse doesn’t look that far away . . . but’ – his face pulls into a frown – ‘wasn’t there something weird about one of the islands? One where they did some sort of chemical testing, or where they put people who had an infectious disease—’

  ‘You mean like a leper colony? Or one of those anthrax island places?’ Lucy remembers something about these from school, but she can’t remember where they were. But anyway, it was so long ago there wouldn’t be any risk of infection now. Would there? ‘Scott – be useful for once and help us out here? You know about medical stuff . . .’

  ‘Listen, lady – I don’t do historical disease outbreaks. As I already told you, I help stressed moms and hipster types with a bunch of vitamins they don’t really need. You know that no one with a balanced diet actually needs vitamin supplementation? For the majority of the world’s population, it’s an expensive racket. Those companies that send out brochures advertising all these wonder cures? Most of it is bullshit. Most of those supplements do nothing at all.’ He pauses, shakes his head. ‘You know, most of the people who think they benefit from my concoctions are really just benefitting from having some fluid pumped into them. Most people are chronically dehydrated . . . that’s the real problem we have. Fast food, unhealthy lifestyles—’

  ‘Yeah, OK, thanks, Scott,’ Lucy says. ‘We’re a bit more concerned about right here, right now, and what might be in the soil on this island. Or the air—’

  ‘Or this cave,’ James says, running a finger down the damp wall. ‘I think we should get out of here.’

  ‘But look at the rain.’ Amelia gestures to the opening, where the rain is still battering the earth, bouncing up off the hard-packed soil, spraying droplets towards them. It’s pitch-dark out there now.

  Lucy is about to say something else when there’s a beep and the green holographic text that they haven’t seen for a while starts to scroll.

  IT’S NOT SAFE OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW. PLEASE STAY WHERE YOU ARE.

  ASSISTANCE WI
LL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY.

  APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

  ‘What? Are they crazy?’ Lucy says. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘I think we’re going to have to.’ James sits down beside Brenda and Amelia. ‘How is she?’ he says, picking up one of Brenda’s hands. Lucy can see Brenda’s chest rising and falling, and occasionally she lets out a random stream of words.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ Amelia looks distracted. ‘Can you make it out?’

  James shakes his head. ‘Just nonsense, I think. Nothing to worry about.’

  Lucy sees Amelia’s mouth draw into a tight line. She’s bothering at the skin around her thumbnail, ripping it off, then balling her hands into fists.

  Well, well, well, Lucy thinks. I wonder what’s got Little Miss Perfect so worried?

  Amelia

  Amelia knows that Lucy is watching her, and she tries not to catch her eye. She looks down at her hands and realises she has ripped the skin off around both thumbnails and they’re now ragged and bleeding. Idiot! Especially after what Lucy and James have just been saying about infectious diseases and quarantined islands. Is that really what’s going on here? Of course not.

  She knows exactly where they are now. And although it might seem like rambling nonsense, Brenda knows something too. Not about her – there’s no way she could know that – but about what happened on the island. It was all over the news. Amelia recalled it herself earlier. But there’s one piece of the puzzle she can’t get hold of. Or that she’s blocking, not willing to deal with it just yet.

  Is this why Brenda was brought here? Another person with a link – a memory – to force Amelia to remember?

  She looks down at the older woman, at her pale, clammy skin, and she can tell that without intervention she’s not going to survive. There’s nothing Amelia can do about it. She’s tried her best to make her comfortable and reduce the fever. She’s not a medic. Brenda’s condition isn’t something that can be fixed with makeshift splints and boiling water.

  What she can’t understand is why she didn’t tell them she’d been bitten. If they’d known, she could have taken her down to the boat when they came for Giles, and now she’d be off somewhere warm and safe, getting the help she needs. There must be medical help available at the big house. This is what she chooses to believe . . . because the alternative is far worse.

  She hopes she’s wrong about where they are. Despite recognising the lighthouse, and the island in the distance – and the memories that tried to push themselves to the surface – she’s still hoping she’s got it all wrong.

  That maybe none of this has anything to do with her at all.

  Apart from her recent suspicions about Brenda, she hasn’t worked out any possible link between her and the others yet, and she has a horrible feeling that perhaps there isn’t one. That they’ve been chosen on the strength of their own secrets, to help illustrate a point.

  Or maybe it’s nothing. Maybe she’s just paranoid. It’s been a long day.

  ‘Hey,’ Lucy says, ‘you doing OK there, Amelia? You look like you’re miles away.’

  ‘Just getting a bit fed up of all this.’ She doesn’t want Lucy to sense any weakness in her. Lucy is on edge after her big reveal, and she’s desperate for something to take the heat off her. Amelia is about to say something else when there’s another beep, and her tracker projects a pixelated screen in front of the entrance to the cave.

  ‘Oh, great,’ Lucy says. ‘I wonder which poor sod is next for mental destruction, eh?’

  Amelia closes her eyes. It’s fine. It won’t be mine. She opens them again. Her heart is pounding. Just start. Just get it over with.

  She can tell by the others’ stillness and the odd, glazed looks on their faces that they’re seeing something she’s not. She taps her tracker in frustration, but it stays as it is; nothing but the undulating green line of her heart rate, spiking high.

  ‘Guys, can one of you—’

  ‘I’m on a canal towpath,’ Lucy says. ‘I can see a small arched bridge up ahead. It’s dimly lit. Only one dull street lamp. There’s a pile of junk or something on one side, shoved up against the wall. It looks like a ton of black bin liners. Loads of crap spilling out. There’s breathing. But that’s me, I think. Well, not me. Whoever’s vision this is. I can’t work out who it is yet.’

  A canal towpath? Amelia relaxes. None of it has anything to do with her. She glances around. Brenda is lying with her eyes closed, not part of this. Scott is staring at one of the cave walls, transfixed. But James is looking down at the floor, his shoulders shaking slightly. He’s gently sobbing.

  ‘James,’ she says, walking over to him. She lays a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs her off.

  His head snaps up. ‘It’s fine.’ He wipes the back of his hand across his face. ‘I’m going to close my eyes now. I don’t need to see this.’

  ‘OK,’ Lucy says. ‘It’s James, then? We’re still walking along the towpath. Had to swerve to avoid the first pile of rubbish. Christ, what a mess this place is. Need to get the council in to clean up.’ She shakes her head. ‘Someone’s talking to me. I can’t really make it out. I think I’m wearing headphones.’ Lucy takes a breath. ‘Not very safety conscious, in an area like this . . .’

  ‘Come on,’ Amelia says. What they’re seeing has nothing to do with her, but the green line on her tracker is a steady repeating line of bumps now, much higher than they should be. ‘What’s happening now?’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Lucy reels backwards as if she’s been grabbed from behind. She twists round quickly, ducking low. ‘There’s a man . . . It wasn’t a pile of rubbish, it was a den. Ooof. I’m on the ground. I almost felt that. The man . . . the man is after me!’

  ‘My camera . . .’ James’s voice is flat.

  Amelia spins to look at him. ‘Where is your camera, James? I don’t think I’ve seen it since we left the visitor centre.’

  ‘It’s here, in my bag. I dropped it earlier, cracked the lens. So I put it in my bag.’ He takes his backpack off, opens the top and rifles around inside. Pulls out his camera and hangs it around his neck.

  Amelia is puzzled for a moment, remembering the visitor centre – James’s mission was to take promotional shots, but she can’t remember him using the camera at all – but she pushes this aside, turns back to Lucy.

  ‘What now, Lucy?’

  Something flutters in Amelia’s chest as she waits for Lucy to respond. She turns to James, who has his eyes open, glazed like the others’, staring at whatever’s unfolding in his mind.

  ‘Lucy?’

  Tears spring to her eyes as she imagines the next scene. She’s already worked it out. The tramp has attacked James, and James is going to retaliate. An accident. He would never mean to hurt him. He was only defending himself . . .

  But that is not what happens.

  ‘Hang on,’ Lucy says at last. ‘This is weird. The view has shifted. I’m not on the ground. I’m looking down at the man on the ground. He has a camera on a strap around his neck.’ She turns to James. ‘I don’t get it. I thought I was inside your head.’

  James is frowning. ‘They’re clever, those Timeo bastards. I’ll give them that. Up to now, we’ve been seeing it unfold from the perspective of the CCTV camera on the other bridge – the one behind you.’

  ‘Huh?’ Scott says.

  ‘Keep watching. You’re getting to the good part.’ James closes his eyes again.

  ‘There’s more light here,’ Lucy says. ‘Closer to that street lamp. There’s blood on the ground, a big pool of it.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Oh God. No. This is horrible . . . I don’t want to watch.’

  Scott continues for her. ‘I’m . . . I’m kicking the man on the ground. I’m wearing black boots. I’m pushing him with my foot. Jeez. He’s trying to get up. The side of his face is covered in blood. His camera – damn, James, is that you? Oh Christ. Your camera’s on the ground next to you. It’s smashed. You’re . . . or he, I don’t know who this guy is . .
. whoever it is, he’s groaning. He’s trying to get his hands onto the ground, trying to lever himself up. But I’m pushing him with my boot again.’ Scott clutches his head. ‘Holy shit, this is . . . this is like the worst virtual reality game I’ve ever played. I can’t . . . Lucy, take over again? Saying it out loud makes it even worse.’

  Lucy is pale with shock, but she takes over, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘I’m, um . . . he’s bending down to the man on the ground. Jesus, James, is that you? You’re just lying there. I don’t know if you can’t move, or if you’re pretending so that . . . so that you won’t get another kicking. But I’m . . . he’s kicking you. Or whoever that is. Fuck. This is brutal.’ She pauses, takes a breath. ‘OK. I’ve stopped. Thank God. I’m leaning down, rummaging through his pockets. Grabbing what I can. I’ve picked up his camera, I’m turning it over in my hands. The lens has a crack running down it, but other than that it’s still intact. It’s just light enough that I can see my face reflected back in the cracked lens. I, um . . . I’m so thin, my face is all angles and dark circles. Dark shadows around my mouth, like sores, maybe. I . . . he . . . I just look broken, and . . . sad. I look like someone who’s lost even the memory of hope. I look like—’

  Scott sees it first. ‘Ho-lee-crap.’ He spins round to face James, eyes wide in shock. ‘Gotta tell you, buddy, I did not expect that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Amelia says. Her voice is high-pitched, frantic. ‘Who is it?’

  Scott is still staring at James. ‘I was right about you being an addict, huh?’ Scott cocks his head, looking partly pleased with himself, but partly disturbed at what he’s just seen.

  Amelia can’t take it in. James has been her strongest ally from the moment they arrived. They’d been drawn to one another from the moment he’d walked up the steps just as she’d woken on the plane, confused and alone. He’d been the first one to help anyone who’d needed it.