‘Who’s up for charades?’ Zoe asked brightly. Too brightly.
We played charades. Then the playing cards came out and we played sevens and poker. Bets were made with ring pulls, buttons and bottle caps. Shaun served the two roasted rabbits, putting two more on the spit from a bucket. Blood dripped on the dried-out pine boughs that lined the floor. A bottle was passed around.
I had a sip of the wine but declined further offers. The wine smelled ripe as a compost heap and left a thick, furry residue on my tongue. The others were making quick work of it though. Bottle after bottle came down from the shelf to be sloshed into tin cups. Some of it was murky and smelled weirdly familiar, yet unlike wine. Zoe and Gill grew giggly, and Duncan got louder and louder the more he drank. We were eating the rabbit with our fingers from tin plates. More bones rattled into the fire, popping and crackling in the heat. All around the fire were dark, drunk eyes and chins slick with meat juices. I started to feel uneasy, but I wasn’t sure why.
‘Let’s play a drinking game,’ Shaun declared, once the meat was done with.
‘I think I’m going to go,’ I whispered to Zoe. ‘It’s getting a bit late.’
‘You can stay the night,’ Zoe said. Her cheeks were pink with the warmth from the fire and her leafy crown was tilted to one side. ‘Don’t go, Maddy, we’re having fun.’
‘What’s your problem?’ Andrew said, voice suddenly sharp.
‘Nothing, I’m just going before it gets too dark.’
‘She can stay the night though, right?’ Zoe said.
The fire crackled and spat in the silence that followed. No one answered Zoe and no one looked at me. Clearly I wasn’t welcome to share the hut I’d helped build for even one night.
‘And on that note, I’ll call it a night,’ I said, standing up. I picked up the nearest bottle to me and held it up. ‘Thanks for a year of quality company, guys.’
I turned and snagged my coat, ducking out into the cold before I’d even put it on. I heard Zoe call my name but no one came after me.
I picked my way through the trees, cursing myself for not bringing a torch or even my bag. Cursing myself for being so stupid. The cold of the night was shocking, even through my coat. What little moonlight there was glanced off of the snow, leading me onwards.
Several times my booted foot crashed through the ice crust on a hole and sent me stumbling. Under the snow the ruts and gullies of the path were invisible. I started to worry about hurting my ankle, possibly breaking a leg. I went slower, knowing that no one was going to come looking. If I fell, hurt, I wouldn’t be found until they came down to wait for the boat.
I nearly dropped the bottle from the hut a few times but never considered leaving it. It was Christmas after all; there wasn’t much else to do but drink. When the tipi was in sight I twisted off the cap and took a deep swig. As soon as the liquid touched my tongue I spat it out onto the snow, coughing and spluttering. It wasn’t wine at all; it was water. Water and fly agaric. Not enough to get them sick. Enough to get high. God only knew how much of the stuff they’d dried and squirrelled away for when the wine ran out.
I washed my mouth with a handful of snow and went to bed. No matter how anxious I was about my return to the mainland, it would at least get me away from the others.
Chapter 20
The day of our departure dawned bright and clear as glass. The sky was a pure, open blue and any scrap of heat was sucked up into it as soon as it was exhaled. The snow was blinding and newly fallen. Every breath was like drowning in a frozen sea. I catalogued each sensation, knowing I would probably never experience this again.
I’d cried on the last night. Alone and thinking of the long journey back to normality, I’d let the tears fall and put my hands on the dirt floor of my tipi, as if to tell the island I would miss it. The previous day I’d found a holed stone on the beach, tumbled smooth as an egg. I wore it now around my neck, on a strand of grey wool pulled from my jumper. A keepsake from Buidseach. A reminder of who I’d been.
We were to be collected around midday at the point at which I and the rest of the women had been deposited. It was strange, remembering how we’d arrived as boys and girls. There were of course still two groups; only I was the entirety of mine.
With no clock I busied myself cleaning up my camp and packing my things, keeping an eye on the sun as it rose higher in the sky. I had considered dismantling my tipi but that hadn’t felt right. Instead, I swept out the fire hole and laid a new pile of logs and tinder. I’d read once about Alaskan trappers who left their little shelters ready for anyone who might come along, in need of warmth or food. Although it was unlikely that someone would stumble on my tipi, it felt right to leave it ready.
I took my bags to the beach we’d been set down on, all those months ago. There I lit a small fire to keep me warm and settled myself on my rolled-up bedding, waiting for the boat to come. I was once more wearing my camera. I felt by turns as if I was waiting for rescue, or a prison ship. There was little I could do to change things though. It was time to go.
The others arrived shortly after I’d made my little camp on the beach. I’d not seen or spoken to any of them since Christmas, over a week ago. Even then it had been dark enough that I’d not had a good look at them. In the clear light of day, they were a ragged bunch. I imagined I looked much the same. The men were sporting beards of varying thickness, and had oily, unwashed hair grown overly long, held back in buns or shoved into a hat. All of us had been wearing and re-wearing the same three or four sets of clothing for eleven months, washing them by hand. There were holes and frayed, faded seams all around. We were all thinner, hands calloused with burst blisters and burns, but all of them seemed happier than I’d seen them since we first arrived. Glad to be going home.
We sat around the fire. They ignored me entirely, aside from Zoe, who offered me a quick smile. Maxine sat apart from the others. Zoe and Shaun also seemed to be on the outs; he sat with Andrew and she took a spot a short distance away by Gill. Perhaps it was the thought that they’d soon be at opposite ends of the country. I doubted she’d told him about her suspected pregnancy.
In any event it didn’t matter who sat where, no one was really talking. All eyes were trained on the horizon, waiting for the boat. I could almost hear their thoughts of food, heating, electricity and soft beds. I longed for those things too. I just didn’t long for the world that accompanied them, for who I was in that world. Not everything I missed would be there when I arrived.
I think after the first hour we all knew something was wrong. Zoe was the one to speak up, asking aloud if we had the wrong day. Maxine got out a little diary and checked for them. It said the same as mine. Unless we’d both independently miscounted, this was the agreed date, our final day on the island. So where was the boat?
We carried on waiting. But there was an edge, an expectant, anxious twist that hadn’t been there before. The small fire I’d made started to die out, but I didn’t go to fetch more wood. To leave, to re-stoke the fire, would be to admit that we would need that fire. That we would be on that beach another hour, or two. Despite my reluctance to leave I didn’t want to think about what that might mean.
Andrew kept checking his watch, our only marker of time. Today was the day according to its tiny digital display. No one asked him how long it had been. Too long was the answer and knowing the actual weight of the time, in minutes and hours, was something I didn’t think any of us were ready for.
Finally, the sun, that burning white hole in the blue sky, started to descend. The shadows grew longer, our silhouettes moving up the beach towards the trees. The cold had stolen in under my clothes ages ago. I felt like a statue.
It was Zoe who finally broke our silent vigil with a question that was barely a whisper.
‘What should we do?’
No one answered her. Not right away. We just sat there, looking out on the calm, empty sea. Then Duncan stood up.
‘Well, I’m going up to that cabin to ask those g
uys what the fuck is going on.’
I’d not thought about the two camera guys. Surely they were being picked up with us. They’d come on the same boat I had. Where were they? I was about to say as much when Andrew beat me to it.
‘Aren’t they leaving with us?’
Duncan paused, seemingly at a loss for words.
I took the chance to speak. ‘They might be staying to break down the equipment or something. But we should find out – there might have been a delay with sending the boat over for us. The weather’s unpredictable this time of year.’
No one mentioned that it was as clear and crisp a day as we’d yet seen. No one had to. I knew as well as they did that no boat would be having trouble today. Still, what choice did we have but to believe it?
‘Get back to camp and get a fire going,’ Duncan instructed Gill. ‘If we’re stuck here for tonight, we’ll need to eat. I’ll come back when I know what’s going on.’
I picked up my day pack and slung it over my shoulder. ‘I’m coming too.’
Duncan didn’t say anything, just turned and started for the treeline. I followed, the snow crumbling under my boots. At any other time I’d have put his silence down to pig-headedness or his dislike of me. But now it felt more like fear, a fear I felt as well.
We hiked up the hill, picking our way over the steep gullies and around fallen trees. The woods were quiet aside from the crunching of our boots. Our breath made thick white clouds in the gloom. By the time we reached the top of the hill that looked down over the portacabin, it was almost completely dark. I’d got slightly ahead of Duncan on the long walk, and stopped on the rise to let him catch up. I had the sense that I didn’t want to face this alone. Together we looked down at the snow-topped cabin.
There were no lights on at all.
I was glad Duncan didn’t offer up some excuse, like that they must be asleep already. Something was very wrong. To deny that now would somehow make me feel worse. Without a word we started the descent down to the meadow and on towards the cabin.
I reached the portacabin first and shone my torch around. Everything was quiet and undisturbed. There were no footprints in the snow. No divots or holes where footprints had been filled in with fresh snowfall either. The generator beside the cabin was silent. I turned the beam of the torch to the door and my breath caught in my throat.
When I’d last seen the cabin it had been summer. I’d looked down on the little structure in its tangle of overgrown wilderness and noticed that the door was open to let the breeze in. Now, in sub-zero weather and with small flurries of snow starting to fall once more, the door was still open. I heard Duncan’s footsteps come to a halt behind me.
I pushed open the door.
For the first time I was grateful for the cold. I imagined that without it, the smell would have been unbearable.
Inside the portacabin all was dark. The light from my torch flashed back at me from screens and steel fixtures. Against the back wall were bunkbeds, the kind I’d seen in prison films, plain and utilitarian. On the left wall was a door, I presumed to a bathroom. Beside the door was a kitchenette. The right-hand wall was given over to desks and a bank of monitors. All were dark, not a single light blinked. Several things had fallen over: a desk lamp, some books, a mug.
The floor was obscured by drifting snow nearest the door. Then with dried leaves that had blown in. Furthest from the door, around the bunkbeds where a shape distended the blankets, there was a large, brownish pool.
Against every natural impulse, I went closer. My feet crunched in the darkness. I followed the torchlight down and saw a layer of dead flies between the leaves.
The bedding was soaked and frozen with the same brownish effluent that covered the floor, but it did not obscure the face of the man in the bottom bunk. One of the two whose names I’d learnt and forgotten months ago. I could no longer tell which as his face was so warped; empty eye sockets gaped at the ceiling, his mouth hanging open too wide, holes where insects had burrowed into his cheeks. I gagged and turned quickly from the liquefying body, reaching the door before I vomited bile onto the pure snow. I retched and heaved until nothing else would come, then picked up a handful of clean snow to press to my sweating face.
Duncan had come out of the cabin behind me. I saw the saliva in his beard and knew he’d been sick as well, inside.
‘How long …’ He didn’t finish the question, but I shook my head.
‘I don’t know. Months, maybe … I think –’ I smothered a dry heave ‘– I think I smelled it … him. Before, when I was up there.’ I waved a hand towards the hill. ‘This door’s been open since summer.’
‘Christ,’ Duncan muttered, glancing at the cabin. ‘What, though, I mean … how?’
Again I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t look.’
Silence stretched out between us as I sluiced my mouth with snow.
‘Where’s the other one?’ Duncan finally murmured.
My stomach churned. ‘Bathroom?’
Without a word Duncan strode back into the cabin. I heard the door crash on the inner wall as he threw it open. Then Duncan swore.
As much as I didn’t want to, I followed him in. Duncan was in the bathroom doorway, frozen. Peering around him I saw a shape on the floor. A body. Clearly the insects had managed to get at more of this poor bastard. There was barely any flesh to him. He was lying beside the toilet, one claw-like hand reaching up, clinging to the bowl.
Without speaking we left the cabin and stood in the snow.
‘What the fuck happened here?’ Duncan said. ‘They’re … they can’t just be fucking dead.’
Him saying that made it real. There were two dead bodies in the cabin behind us. Bodies of men we had met. We were on an island, with two dead men. The boat had not come for us.
‘The phone,’ Duncan said suddenly. ‘The radio or whatever. Where is it?’
He turned back to the cabin and I went with him, reluctantly. We shone our torches along the array of screens and computers. At the end nearest the door was a dock with a blocky handset in it. A satellite phone of some kind. Duncan snatched it up and pressed buttons, then swore.
‘Dead,’ he said.
I felt a cold weight settle in my stomach. ‘Generator’s not making any noise. Must be out of fuel or something.’
‘There has to be some spare,’ Duncan said, already shining the light around to look for it.
‘I’ll check outside.’
We checked, both inside and out. There was no spare fuel, only the tanks hooked up to the generator, whose needles hovered at empty. Obviously when the two men in the cabin had died the generator had wound down, drained by things left on inside. But surely the production team had planned for that fuel to be used. Why had no replacement fuel been delivered?
A loud bang made me jump and I snapped out of my thoughts to find Duncan glaring at a newly made dent in the cabin wall. He cradled his fist in his other hand.
‘What the fuck?’ he breathed, then louder, ‘What the FUCK?’ punctuated with another punch and another dent in the wall. He rounded on me. ‘What is going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, pointlessly, because how could I know? ‘But we should get back to the others and tell them.’
Duncan’s eyes widened and I could see him processing what I’d just said. The others had no idea of the horror show we’d discovered up here. They were all back at camp, waiting for news. He cast a helpless look at the cabin door.
‘There’s nothing we can do for them,’ I said, as gently as possible. ‘We should tell the others.’
He nodded and turned away without a word. I followed and we made our way slowly back towards the main camp, weighed down with bad news and terrible knowledge. What wore at me more, though, was what we didn’t know. Where was our boat? What were the people who’d sent us here doing? How had two healthy young men died so suddenly?
We arrived to a subdued camp. Everyone was inside, bags heaped by the entrance. The place
looked bare and stark with no bedrolls or clothes lying around. It looked more like an animal den than a home for eight people. The only nod to domesticity was a pot on the fire, in which a thin gruel of seaweed and rice bubbled. Gill was staring into it as if mesmerised by the bubbling mess.
‘We’ve uh … we’ve got something to tell you,’ Duncan said, rubbing his bruised knuckles with his other hand. ‘The cameramen, they’re um … they’re dead. For a while. They’ve … been dead a while.’
A wave of shock went through the huddled group.
‘What about the phone?’ Andrew said. ‘The boat?’
‘The phone’s dead,’ I said. ‘Generator’s out of fuel. Nothing up there works.’ I took a breath, weighing up what I was about to say and how it would affect them. ‘There wasn’t any spare fuel up there, which means they didn’t have enough to last this long, because something must have been using power even if they weren’t … They would have run out long before now, using power … and no one’s brought more fuel.’
There was silence. Zoe started to cry.
‘I think,’ I said carefully, ‘that both of them had to have died around the same time. They didn’t try to get to us for help or, apparently, summon any help from the mainland.’
I didn’t add that they could have called for help – and received none. It was an option I didn’t want to present right now, not with everyone still in shock.
‘How did they …’ Andrew said, then broke off.
‘I don’t know. We didn’t really … examine them. But, from the way one was in bed, the other by the toilet … maybe they were ill? Or something made them sick.’
‘Poison.’
I looked round and found Gill staring at me, her face an unreadable mix of emotions.
‘What?’
‘They could have been poisoned,’ Gill said.
A chill crept up my spine. ‘They might have been affected by carbon monoxide from the generator but … I don’t think that’s likely, given it was outside.’
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