The Last Resort

by Susi Holliday

  ‘So you say,’ Lucy scoffs.

  Amelia is still in her face. ‘Shut up. Just shut up. You’re the one writing the lies, bending the truth, putting stuff out there that can never disappear, even if they retract it all. It’s even worse now with social media; people can screen-grab things before anyone else has even noticed – sell that to the highest bidder. You people make me sick.’

  Lucy laughs. ‘Oh, Saint Amelia! You do have a feisty belly on you after all. Glad to have awakened it.’

  ‘Screw you,’ Amelia says, then shoves Lucy in the chest. She doesn’t think it was hard, and Lucy is no doubt milking it for all she’s worth, but she slips back and crashes into the wall of the cave.

  ‘You little—’ She struggles to get to her feet, getting tangled in the blankets and sliding around on the floor. She falls back again and the wall judders. She stops moving, her mouth dropping wide open in shock as she slowly starts to fall backwards through the moving wall. ‘What the . . .’

  Amelia takes a step back. Scott and James appear on either side of her, all three of them watching now as Lucy falls back further until she’s flat on the ground, and what they’d thought was the wall of the cave is now flipped up towards the roof, like a garage door.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Lucy sits up, grinning. ‘An actual hidden door . . . like Aladdin’s cave. This is absolutely mental.’ She starts laughing, and she can’t stop. She waves a hand in front of her face. ‘Oh my God, seriously? I thought we’d had all the surprises today . . .’

  Scott takes a few tentative steps until he is partially inside the concealed section. He scans the walls, the ceiling. Frowns. ‘Well, it sure ain’t lined with gold. You found a magic lamp yet, Lucy?’

  Lucy starts laughing again, and Scott joins in. The sound of their manic laughter echoes around the small cave.

  Amelia clamps her hands over her ears. ‘Would you two shut up? I can’t hear myself think.’

  ‘Maybe you should come out of there,’ James says from the mouth of the cave. He’s the only calm one of them left now. ‘It might not be safe.’

  ‘It might not be safe?’ Lucy cries. ‘Oh, you are hilarious, Jamesy-boy.’ Her laughter filters away. ‘We haven’t been safe all day.’

  ‘I know, it’s just . . .’ He lets his sentence trail off. Lucy is right, obviously. But there’s a reason they found this place. Isn’t there?

  Amelia take a few steps inside, looks around. It’s not a lot different from the main part. They’ve just sectioned it off with that slide-up door – which was incredibly convincing in the murky muted light from Scott’s phone. Lucy must have triggered it when she fell. She circuits the small space, tapping on the walls, pressing. But nothing else moves, and there are no hollow sounds when she taps.

  ‘Are you thinking there might be more of these doors?’ James takes her lead and starts tapping and pushing on the walls. ‘Maybe it’s a network . . . it might lead us to the big house.’

  Amelia frowns. She hadn’t really considered it, but it makes sense. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. But it doesn’t seem like there’s anything else leading off here.’

  ‘Maybe this is how they get around the island so fast,’ Scott says. He starts tapping the walls too. ‘Maybe there are underground tunnels and they just scoot around in those carts, keeping an eye on us.’ He pauses. Stops tapping. ‘Is this instead of the cameras that we already found and they confessed to, or as well as, do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s safe to assume they’re watching us, listening to us and monitoring us in as many conceivable ways as possible,’ Amelia says.

  ‘And some inconceivable ways.’ Lucy taps her tracker. ‘Nice cave, guys,’ she says. ‘Now when are you coming back to get us?’

  There’s a beep, and then the holographic lettering starts to scroll.

  YOU’LL BE REUNITED WITH YOUR FRIENDS VERY SOON.

  MEANWHILE, ENJOY THE REFRESHMENTS . . . AND THE SHOW.

  WELL DONE FOR GETTING THIS FAR.

  YOU WILL BE REWARDED.

  Lucy swears. ‘Thanks, guys! You know what? This so-called game is doing my head in. Do you think we’re being live-streamed? Are people at home on their sofas deciding which one of us gets obliterated next?’ She glances around. ‘Where are these refreshments, then?’ She gets to her feet and wanders around the small section of cave, kicking at the base of the walls. A pile of different-sized rocks sits in a dark, recessed part of the space, with a couple of large boulders at the base and smaller ones scattered around. She picks up one of the smaller ones, examines it. ‘Definitely a rock.’ Then she tosses it to the back of the pile and pokes around a few of the others. When she gets to the larger ones, she kicks again . . . and one of them gives. ‘Bingo!’

  Amelia has watched this little performance with interest. She goes over to help, and the two of them remove all the smaller rocks. As they reach the final large rock, they look at each other and grin.

  ‘What’ve you got there, ladies?’ Scott says.

  It’s obvious, now that they’ve moved the real rocks out of the way, that these base-level boulders are not rocks at all – the tops are flat, and when Amelia runs a finger down the side, although well designed to look rock-like, it’s clearly made of some sort of fibreglass. ‘You do it.’ She nods to Lucy, who looks pleased.

  Lucy puts her hands around it and pulls. It slips off without much of an effort. She holds the rock-like facade aloft, like a silver cloche in a fancy French restaurant.

  ‘Ta-da!’

  Lucy

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Lucy says. Just when they think they’ve seen it all, they throw another curveball to knock them off balance. Whatever is in this box had better be worth it. She drops the fibreglass rock cover on the floor, then lifts the lid of the box underneath. Inside are two smaller boxes – one metal and fully sealed, the other plastic with a pop-off lid. She opens the plastic one first, handing the lid to Amelia, who is still hovering by her shoulder.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Lucy says. She pulls out the contents of the box in one big handful. ‘Exciting, or not exciting?’

  James picks up what she’s dropped on the ground. Unrolls it, and something else drops out. ‘Waterproof jackets . . . and a head torch. Intriguing.’

  ‘Only intriguing if we’re going caving, which, considering we can’t find any other concealed entrances, I don’t think we are?’

  Scott disappears back into the main area. After a moment, the sounds of kicking and tapping echo through the space between the two sections of the cave.

  ‘Good thinking, Scott,’ Lucy calls through to him. Then to James and Amelia, she says, ‘We should’ve checked the other walls through there. No rules to state that the connections have to come through here. Maybe this was just the easy one for us to find. So we’d work it all out.’

  Amelia picks up a jacket and torch. ‘Or maybe this is just so we can go outside in the rain . . . and dark.’

  ‘Why go to all the effort of making concealed rooms and boxes disguised as rocks, though?’ James pulls on a jacket and zips it up. ‘Bit of a waste of effort.’

  ‘All part of the amazing super-fun game though, Jamesy – eh?’ Lucy rolls her eyes.

  ‘Maybe. Just seems a bit elaborate.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Scott says. ‘It’s like Giles said right off the plane. It’s. A. Game. They’re tossing in as many ridiculous surprises as they can—’

  ‘But what if we hadn’t found the cave?’ Lucy says, interested now. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then it wouldn’t matter,’ Scott says. ‘There’d be something else along the way.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe. Or maybe they have no fucking idea what they’re doing yet, and we’re the mugs who’re testing out all the possibilities . . .’

  ‘It could be one of those “choose your own adventure” type things,’ Amelia suggests.

  Lucy laughs. ‘Well, whatever it is, I hope they’re not expecting me to give them a favourable write-up.’


  ‘We’re not allowed to talk about it though, are we?’ Amelia says.

  Lucy clenches her hands into fists. Amelia is becoming more irritating as the day goes on. ‘Seriously . . . what are they going to do to enforce us not talking about it? I’ll be making sure I tell everyone I know not to sign up for this if they get asked – and I know a lot of people, remember?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ James says. ‘I imagine their enforcement will involve revealing your big secret more publicly.’

  He’s right, of course. But she’s not going to tell him that. She’s cold and tired. She’s been subjected to a memory that she thought she’d done a good job of keeping locked up in a little box – and she’s had to share it with these strangers, just to rub salt in the wound. They might be tolerating her now, but there’s no doubt they think she’s a monster. James’s memory feed was pretty nasty, as was Tiggy’s. From what little they saw of Brenda’s, there was some serious heartache linked to that. But Lucy’s wins in the evil-bitch stakes, hands down. Is it any wonder her moods flit back and forth like they do? Every single day, she has to find some way to live with herself.

  ‘Whatever.’ She turns back to the fake rock and starts to pull out the metal box. She tries, but it’s too heavy and it slips out of her hands.

  ‘Here, let me.’ James leans in and grips the box with both hands, then slowly pulls it out. He lays it on the floor and looks over at Lucy, who’s moved out of the way. His eyes are saying, ‘Shall I open it?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He unclips the two metal clasps at each end, twisting them downwards. The lid pops up and he lifts it off. Lucy peers over his shoulder as he starts to unpack it, laying the contents on the floor. Four bottles of a pale yellow drink. Four shiny red apples. Four packets of crisps. Then something wrapped in waxed paper, which he unfolds to reveal a chocolate cake, pre-cut into four equal segments.

  ‘Christ. This is like reality TV show bingo. We’ve gone from Big Brother to that celebrity jungle one, with our little “reward”. Scott . . .’ Lucy calls over her shoulder. ‘Your dinner’s here.’ She lifts one of the bottles and inspects it. ‘He’s been moaning about being starving for hours. It’s weird, though, because I’m not hungry at all.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Amelia says. ‘James?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Well . . . it’s not so much that I’m not hungry, it’s just that I’m a bit wary of eating anything here. They put those cereal bars and things in our bags, and there were the nibbles at the tiki hut, but I just didn’t want to risk it.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’ Lucy places the bottle back in the box. ‘They’ve drugged everything else they’ve given us. Maybe this will be all-out poison.’ She takes an apple instead. ‘This is so shiny it doesn’t look real. This whole picnic thing reminds me of The Famous Five – I can’t tell what’s in the bottles yet, but it doesn’t look like “lashings of ginger beer”.’

  ‘Who are the Famous Five?’ Scott chips in. ‘Were they the guys who blew up your Parliament with gunpowder?’

  Lucy laughs. ‘No, idiot. Think Nancy Drew, but with five annoying kids instead of one . . . or was one of them a dog?’ She shakes her head. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘If we’re going for kids’ stories, I’d say this apple is more like the one that poisoned Snow White,’ Scott says, lifting out an apple, inspecting it, then putting it back. ‘Do they really think we’re going to eat fruit that we found in a box disguised as a rock? Who knows how long it’s been here.’

  James smiles. ‘It’s interesting you mention The Famous Five. I’ve been thinking the same all day. This whole island thing. What did they say the name of this place was?’

  ‘Nirrik,’ Scott says. ‘Now, do not ask me how I remembered that. It just stuck in my head for some reason.’

  ‘Did you say Nirrik?’ Amelia says. She has gone very pale. She spells out the letters one by one. ‘That’s Kirrin, backwards—’

  ‘Wait,’ Lucy says. ‘What? How did you happen to click to that?’

  Amelia shrugs. ‘My mind just works that way. Puzzles, word games.’

  Lucy frowns, unsure where she’s going with this. ‘O . . . K . . .’

  ‘Kirrin was the island the Famous Five went to.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ says Lucy. ‘Where they met George.’

  Amelia looks away. ‘Yes. It’s where they met George.’

  Amelia

  Amelia needs to get away. Things are moving too close to the truth, but she doesn’t want to reveal what she knows. Not yet. She steps outside and raises a palm upwards. ‘I think the rain has finally stopped.’ She walks further into the fresh air, takes a deep breath. ‘It’s called petrichor, that scent. Did you know that?’ She turns to face James, who has followed her out. He shakes his head. ‘The smell of the air after the rain – following a dry spell. You could tell it hadn’t rained here for a while. The ground was so hard-packed.’

  James just nods.

  Lucy and Scott come out behind him.

  ‘How come there were only four portions of food?’ Lucy asks. ‘If Brenda hadn’t taken out her tracker—’

  ‘They’re manipulating us,’ Scott says. ‘They probably whispered something in her ear. Or maybe they just knew she wasn’t going to last much longer, even if she hadn’t tried to brain herself pulling out the tracker. They’re watching us, remember?’

  ‘Well, the four of us are OK now, aren’t we?’ Amelia says, forcing a smile. ‘Even Scott’s ankle seems to be holding up.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he mutters. ‘Stopped hurting long ago.’

  ‘Thanks to your little bag of tricks, eh?’ James nods towards his pocket, where he’s stashed his diminishing bag of mixed drugs.

  Scott shrugs. ‘I’m kinda thinking I might not take these anymore. I mean, I need to stay on them today, make sure I keep the pain in my ankle at bay until we get back home. But after that, I’m done. I’m gonna get help. Watching your memory feed made me feel sick. I thought . . . I guess I thought I could shift responsibility onto the user. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for long enough. But seeing it like that? I took advantage. I’m responsible for that.’

  James nods. ‘Yeah. You are. But we’re all taking responsibility now, aren’t we? I mean, we didn’t see much of Brenda’s, and I don’t even want to think what might’ve been going on there – I mean, it looked like she was giving her child away . . . And you didn’t hear about Lucy’s.’

  ‘But what about Amelia?’ Lucy butts in. ‘She doesn’t have this tracker. We saw what happened with Brenda – as soon as she pulled it off, the feed stopped. We’re not going to see what Amelia’s got to hide, are we?’

  ‘It could still be projected out of my wrist-tracker,’ Amelia says, hoping she’s wrong.

  Lucy taps the side of her head, just above her earpiece. ‘Not attached to your neurons, is it?’

  ‘Do we have to know?’ James turns to Amelia. ‘I think we get the picture.’ He shrugs. ‘We all did terrible things. We’ve all been brought here to be held accountable. I’m sure Amelia doesn’t have to have hers projected for her to know she needs to deal with it?’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly fair,’ Lucy snaps. ‘Maybe Amelia should just tell us anyway.’

  ‘Right,’ Scott joins in. ‘Come on, Amelia. It’s not like you don’t know what you did – give the rest of us a peek at your rotten core.’

  ‘What about you, Scott?’ James says. ‘I don’t recall seeing your memory yet.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Scott says, with a small laugh. ‘I’m pretty sure they’re saving the best for last.’

  Amelia tightens her headlamp and switches it on. ‘Guys, come on,’ she says, trying to take control. ‘I think we need to get going. It’s not far now. Let’s just get to the house and see what happens next.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lucy says, ‘so that’s a no then, Amelia? Not going to be sharing your little secret?’

  ‘Let’s just get to the house,�
�� she repeats tightly, barely able to get the words past her constricting throat.

  Lucy makes a disgusted sound, but drops it – at least for now.

  ‘Maybe the cops’ll be there.’ Scott pulls on his waterproof jacket. It’s too cold now to go outside with just shorts and a T-shirt; his sweater is long gone. ‘They’ll be there to check things out, after Harvey called an ambulance for Giles and Brenda, right?’

  Lucy shakes her head. ‘I doubt that. We’re just guinea pigs, aren’t we? They’re going to give us a slap-up meal, say thanks for our time, then pay us off and tell us to keep our traps shut.’ She flicks her headlamp on. ‘That’s what I think, anyway. I bet the others are all being pampered as we speak.’

  ‘Even Brenda?’ Amelia zips up her jacket.

  ‘Especially Brenda. OK, so they left it a bit longer than they should’ve, but of course they were coming for her. Of course they have the medication she needs to get better. Right? I mean, what’s the alternative? We’ve all said this: Giles called it right from the start. It’s a game. They kicked it off with a fake plane crash, but none of us reacted. So they stepped it up—’

  ‘Oh man, you’re right!’ Scott says, grinning. ‘The clues were right there at the start. He’s a goddamn games designer! That’s why he disappeared early on. He’s in on it all – I’d say Tiggy was part of it too. She was too calm when Giles’s body washed up like that.’

  ‘What do you mean, his body?’ James says. ‘Are you saying it wasn’t his body at all? That this is all a big, stupid hoax?’

  Lucy laughs. ‘Have any of you seen that slasher flick called April Fool’s Day? This bunch of teens head out to an island, and they start getting bumped off one by one, until there’s one girl left – you know, that usual crap. Anyway, she’s traumatised, crying her eyes out, she’s just seen all her friends get horribly mutilated . . . then she goes into this room and they’re all there going “Surprise!” because the whole thing was just some big elaborate stunt. Seriously? One of the sickest things I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine?’