by Nathan Lunn
“Ju– hello?” Kye’s stuttering speech came through to her ear as she dipped underneath a particularly condensed pocket of cloud. A louder bang signalled the start of a continuous alarm, bringing with it irritatingly loud wails that only added to the growing chaos.
She shouted over the noise. “Hello? We’re out of fuel, the engines took a hit and it’s broken badly. I’m gonna try and land us down on the island.” She tapped her temple as radio silence fell upon her ears. “Hello?” She turned and looked to Eddie, stress etched across both of their faces. “I’m not getting anything.” Eddie shook his head, his face yellow and pale – the seatbelt behind him tensed as he gripped it with his hand. He bounced around the cabin as the car shifted, and he started to yell back at Julie, his voice coming out in jolted missteps.
“Me… either… try the… call–” he was cut off as he dropped to the floor of the car, retching nothing but hot air into the carpet. The constant rumbling was reduced to an occasional drop after a further minute of difficult wheel wrestling, and Julie breathed a sigh of relief as they broke out of the cloud cover and down into closer airspace. This calm following the storm was rather short lived, as almost as soon as they had settled down, the engine started to short circuit, venting the last of its spare fuel to the clean atmosphere around them.
“Shit, shit,” Julie yelled, as her hands swerved on the wheel, pulling up tight to try and get some extra lift into the booster. “Eddie, check the back of the car for a quick-fix.” Hearing no response, she turned to Eddie – who was currently busy cowering in the footwell and clenching his stomach – and slapped him on the back of the head.
“What? What?” Eddie reeled up, his face an ever-paler shade, as he looked to Julie.
“I said check the back of the car for a quick-fix,” Julie returned, setting her sights back on the dashboard and tapping away to remove some of the less pressing emergency matters. “Hurry!”
Eddie scrambled back to the middle chair, ripping the pillow away and fumbling around blindly in the dark, His hand hit a box and he shouted, withdrawing his arm through the hole and dropping it onto the floor.
“Alright I got it, what you want me to do?” Eddie was all jumped up, and his bounces were clashing with the car’s rumblings. Julie spoke over her shoulder and he burst into action.
“Crawl over to the backside of the window and paste some of that Flo-Seal over the holes in the engine.”
“Crawl out the window?” Eddie shouted, incredulous, as he opened the box and grabbed the Flo-Seal tube; a testing squeeze confirmed that there wasn’t much left.
“No! Just crawl to the edge, and try and reach from there,” Julie yelled back, groaning as the car dropped another metre and slammed her into her chair. Eddie paused for a moment, cursed and started moving over the seats, brushing away the shards of highly tempered glass in his way. His head slammed against the roof of the window as the car dropped. Pulling the tube from his pocket and through the window, he extended his arm past the jagged spikes placed around the rim, and carefully and quickly pasted the Flo-Seal onto the top of the boot nearest to the higher hole punched through the bodywork. It slipped out of the nozzle onto the overheating metal, before crawling across to the nearest hole, then expanding and hardening. Once the first plug was complete, the unbearable whine eased off a little more, and the car started to ride smoother with less jolts occuring in such quick succession. After straining pointlessly for a moment, he leaned back into the car and spoke to Julie, who was starting to sweat. “I can’t get the lower one, it’s too far down.”
Julie spat through gritted teeth, “It’s fine.” She tapped on the dashboard once more, and the car started to drop. “I can get us down safely on this, but after that it’ll be totalled.” Eddie sighed audibly and a fire erupted in her eyes. “Look, there’s not much more I can do here, okay?” The car dropped to a few metres over the jungle tops, as they broke out past the mountains on their right and continued screaming towards the north end of the island.
“Alright, alright!” Eddie replied, holding his hands up in mock defence. He retched air again, before catching his hand around his mouth and speaking through the clasped fingers. “Fucking hell, Julie. Why is it always you who’s crashing?” Ignoring his protestation, she double checked the internal altimeter and started to read out the numbers as she shakily descended the car to the jungle floor.
“80 feet… 60 feet… 30 feet.” A sharp pull on the wheel rendered the car horizontal, flattening Eddie and Julie into their chairs as the strong shift in gravity took hold. A final cough expelled from the engine as it died, unceremoniously dumping the hovercar down the final 30 feet and onto the matted jungle floor.
Groaning some life into her limbs, Julie brushed the shattered glass off her lap and stepped out of the car. The pungent smell of the fuel-leakage had almost dispelled, replaced by the various items of the jungle around them. Grabbing Eddie from the back seat, she pulled him over to the base of a nearby tree and propped him up against the bark. Standing up, she looked around her, sniffing the air for the slightest inclination of water nearby, but coming up empty, save for a subtle salty aroma.
"Goddamn it," she muttered to herself. She turned and shook Eddie's shoulders. "Eddie!" A lack of response prompted her to walk off into the jungle, scouring the ground nearby for a source of drinkable fluid. They had landed close to the edge of the tree line, and she could spot peekings of grey through the barcode mass of wooden trunks blocking her way. As she reached the fringe of the jungle, she found herself walking out onto a long open plateau – a rocky outcropping punctuated only by various grazing gulls picking away at worms hidden in the cracks below. The wind had risen here, and with it came the source of the salt. Below the cliff face churned the ocean, a moving, battering force throwing white thin spray high up the sides of the rock wall and beaching helpless fish into nooks and crannies hollowed out from years of evolutionary erosion. Far to her left, the cliff face dropped off and merged with the jungle in a mess of grey rock and white sand, and to her right, it did the opposite, rising up to join the centred mountain range in stilted jagged boulders.
“Quite the picture.” Eddie moved to her side and looked out over the turquoise waters.
Julie looked over and nodded, asking, “How are you feeling?”
Eddie scratched his right arm, his fingers passing right below a deep cut that was welling blood into his shirt. “Aye, not so bad. Bit banged up though.”
Julie looked at his arm and replied, “I see that. You know you’re not meant to just grab the seatbelt right?”
Eddie laughed before wincing.
“Yeah, we can go get some kind of medication on it. You checked the car?”
“Nope,” Eddie replied. He looked back to the jungle, his voice thrown over the raising wind. “Reckon you’ve crashed it though.”
Julie pushed past him, rolling her eyes though a smile was on her face. “Yeah, yeah, nice one, smartarse. Let’s get back and take stock.” They passed off the rock and back into the cramped sweaty jungle – a minute’s walk and they were back in the clearing made by the car’s rough descent. Sitting in the middle of a flattened leaf rug was what remained of the hovercar – a ruptured, carbon-scored and twisted engine at the back led to the jigsaw remains of a back window. By comparison, the front of the vehicle was in pristine condition, the only real issue being the mulch of forest matter and mud packed into the grooves of the metalwork. A well of light came from above, the sides of the foliage-based tunnel straight with burnt leaves. Kicking the side door open, Eddie leaned back into the passenger seat, ducking under the bolt still holding the broken weapon.
“That’ll be useless,” he said, slapping the flaccid barrel with his finger. Julie moved around to the back of the car, and picked up a rogue charred branch from the floor. Cracking open the boot, she reeled back as a great deal of thick smoggy smoke lifted into the air.
“Jesus, must have been leaking from the drive straight into the boot,” she
said between her coughs. After a full minute, the smoke had cleared out, and the contents of the boot were revealed. “Oh, that’s just perfect,” Julie spoke, then let out a loud groan and walked away from the car.
Eddie poked his head out of the back window, having crawled through the entire car, and looked over to Julie.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, craning his neck to try and see the interior of the boot. Julie stayed silent, but waved her hand impatiently at the back of the car. Eddie climbed out and walked around to the back, groaning louder when he saw what was inside. “Seriously? That’s all we have?”
Crushed and smashed in the back of the car, once-ostentatious pieces of artwork were now strewn over the inside of the boot. Multitudes of small canvas paintings had been shredded, their wooden frames splintered. Marble dust floated in the air, minute remnants of the statues and busts that had been tightly packed into the hold – cracked vase chips of dissimilar sizes were pushed tightly into the corners. Eddie reached in and grabbed a large sized chip that had been cracked in a serrated fashion, flipping it over in his hand to look at the blue flowered design printed flatly across the smooth porcelain.
“S’pose we can use this for something? Everything else is pretty much worthless,” he said to Julie, handing her the vase-piece. He grabbed another similar sized one for himself and dropped it into his pocket, then moved back over to the front of the car.
“Worthless?” Julie asked, sifting through the debris. “If these are real, some of these must be worth millions.” She dropped a flap of canvas, rubbing the oil paint off her fingers and onto the cushions at the back of the car. “At least they were.”
Eddie’s head popped back out of the front window.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Here, help me with this,” Eddie said. Julie moved next to him and grabbed the shaft of the bolt embedded in the car headrest. With a fair amount of effort, they removed the remains of the gun from the steel, and ripped the bolt out of the cushion. “Jesus, it’s still sharp.”
“Right?” Julie replied, lightly padding her thumb against the tip. “Barbs are still attached too. Can we get the second from the back of the car?”
“No, no. It’s mangled beyond use, I already looked.” Eddie crawled out of the car and stood. His hand was wrapped around the Amaterasu goggles hanging from his neck – he slipped them up over his eyes and powered them on. “These are working alright, thank god.”
“Good to hear. Keep a close eye on them,” Julie added. “We can’t have those break on us when we went through so much trouble to get them.”
Eddie laughed, turned them off and looked over. He spoke. “No kidding. Charge is a little low though. I think we need to head up the side of the mountain, get a better view of the area.”
Julie agreed, shouldering her empty bag and moving towards the trees. “Wait up.” Eddie hopped behind her to walk by her side, as they moved their way onto the cliff face.
The sun had started to set as they made their way up the rocky and difficult scree. A few scraped knuckles later, they had managed to scramble past the more vertically-inclined areas of the mountain, and were now slowly meandering up the flatter and more consistent ridge. The view of the remainder of the island had increased the higher they went, with a good look at the whole of the jungle and the beach surrounding the rim – the white was busy clashing with the orange of the waters. Small groupings of soft coral bunched against each other, lightly illuminating the area around with a cold bioluminescent glow. A restless Eddie, and a drained Julie, were plodding along the unmarked route, when he stopped and pulled himself up, pointing eagerly to the sky to the east of them.
"Hey, hey! There's a car!" Eddie had began to jump about now, as the vehicle descended to the jungle floor. "Hey! Up here!" Tutting, he turned back around, and the car moved entirely out of sight as it slipped below the canopy of the trees.
"Ah fuck," Julie added dejectedly. "Guess they missed us and the car."
Eddie nodded.
"Must have done. Unless that's not actually them?" He stopped in Julie's way once more and turned, his eyes wide. "It could be Croft? Followed us down?" Julie pondered this for a moment, before shaking her head and pushing past to continue up the ridge.
"Whoever it is, they're down there. If we can get up this way, we can get to someplace safer. Higher up, you know?" Eddie followed her pace, his breath a little ragged.
"Yeah, makes sense. Looks like the top of the mountain is a little over this ridge."
By the time they reached the head of the mountain, the sun was even lower, and the intense red mixes were washing over their skin, giving it a look of being irritated or overly raw. As it was, their joints were now particularly chafed, though not on any visible areas. Blisters had flared up around Julie's ankles, and a small tumble with some boulders had left Eddie's elbow bloody. The monotone whistling of the wind shifted in pitch. Their heads shot to the side as another vehicle began to descend onto the island in the far distance, less smooth than the first and driving at a more frantic pace.
"Bloody hell, they're in a rush!" Eddie had to yell over the blast of the wind. “Can you see anything?”
Julie yelled back, “No! Wait, look, they’re headed down that way! To that building in the mountain, you see it?” Eddie followed the trail from her finger, and noticed what she was pointing out. The small shape of the hovercar was just about to touch down at the building set way into the croppings of rock.
“How did we not see that? Looks like an installation of some kind?” Eddie asked, expecting no answer from Julie.
“We should stay away from them too, that has to be the Crofts touching down. But that means the earlier car was probably Kye and the others!” she replied, her voice turning hoarse from the constant shouting.
“Will you two stop yellin’? He’s gonna find us!” A voice rose above the wind behind them, startling them both to reach for their vase chips, aimlessly pointing them far from their bodies in outstretched and taut arms.
“Who said that? Show yourself!” Eddie shouted back, scanning the horizon of the bare rocky hilltop for some semblance of human movement.
“We’re good thanks, just know that you can’t stay here,” another voice replied, different from the first. Eddie thought it might have been a woman.
“Yeah, this is our space!” A gruffer voice joined the mix, coming from behind them this time. “Find your own.”
Julie pushed her back against Eddie’s and called out, “Look, we aren’t here to steal spaces. Just come out and we can talk.” A moment of silence passed, in which she and Eddie shared a nervous glance. “Hello?” she tried again, receiving a reply this time.
“Okay, we aren’t going out there, but you can come in here for a moment.” It was the woman. “Quickly, quickly.” Her head popped up behind a larger boulder to their left, and a hand followed, waving them over and round to her side. Walking over with care, they were surprised to see the boulder was hollowed out, and the darkness in front continued down a few more metres. Ducking under the rock lip, they came out inside a cramped and dank cave – moss was leaking down the edges, and the two voices were squatting in the middle, next to a meagre pile of leaves and fruits. Eddie lifted his hand to his goggles, but Julie grabbed it and shook her head.
“You weren’t on the transport?” The woman’s voice was given a face as she stood up on her haunches, backing away from the entrance of the cave. She looked to be in her fifties, wrinkled lines starting to show around her eyes and cheeks. Her hair had been tousled into a matted mess by the wind, and grubby hands picked impatiently at her muddy clothing, torn at the thigh and ankle on each leg.
“You’re right! I don’t recognise them at all, what are youse? Specialist squad?” The man now spoke, providing a face to the northern British accent. His head was balding, and his unkempt beard was patchy – he looked to be a similar age to the woman. His button shirt was stained green from chlorophyll, and his hands the same, presumably from shredding the pile
of leaves next to him. His eyes lit up as a thought crossed his mind. “Or, maybe, workers? Have we won something? Is the game suspended?”
The woman to his left slapped his arm, bringing him out of his reverie. “Don’t be stupid, Artie! Frank’s still over there, the game can’t be over.” She laughed and continued, “I mean, we’re both still here? So the game continues.” Her smile fell as she turned her gaze back to Julie and Eddie, who were sitting in the mouth of the cave, gripping their chips tightly.
“What do you mean, won something?” Julie insisted, pointing with her make-shift weapon at first, then regretting it and putting it back down by her side. “Who are you people, and what are you talking about?”
“We did ask first. But, of course, you know the game we mean?” Genuine confusion flashed across both the man and the woman’s faces. She pointed at the bolt wrapped into Eddie’s waist. “You got one of those haven’t you? You must be playing?” Eddie looked down to the bolt and ripped it free, holding it out for inspection.
“We got this from our car. Alexis Croft fired it at us? There was no game.” The woman smiled at the mention of his name, her grin missing a tooth near the back of her mouth.
“Ah! So you do know who we mean?”
“Well, ‘course they do. That’s his bolt alright, seen them enough times at the banquet,” the man added, leaning back, calmed down.
Eddie and Julie shared a look of utter confusion.
“What is the game?” Eddie yelled, shaking the bolt in their faces. “We came here in our own car!”