Dread built below my panic. Not only were they out to get me, they were also high on fly agaric, hallucinating and erratic. On the one hand, decreased motor skills and unsteady perception could help me get away. On the other, I had no way of knowing what they might do if they caught me while not operating rationally.
To the right came the sounds of someone crashing through the dead ferns and fallen branches.
‘Go, now!’ Zoe whispered, pushing me.
‘Be careful,’ I hissed, even as I ducked away into the surrounding dark.
My ankle screamed at me to slow my pace, but I didn’t dare. Half crouching, I limped at speed through the trees. After I’d gone about fifty feet I recognised a fallen log wedged up on a boulder. The cave was north of there. I forced myself on, now dragging my injured leg. My eye was swollen shut by this time and I could hardly see. A low hill caught me by surprise and I fell down it, wrenching my shoulder when my bag caught on something. There was movement in the trees; it seemed like the whole forest was alive and calling for me.
At last I reached the small clearing where the cave entrance was hidden. I was exhausted and shivering by this time with cold and spent adrenalin. I fell to my belly and pushed the panel back, crawled inside. After fumbling the camouflage back in place behind me I shrugged off my bag and fell through the gap into the inner chamber. Breathless and agonised I leant against the wall. With numb fingers I found the handle of my hatchet and held it close. I waited there, ready for attack, until I passed out.
Chapter 27
I woke up with a start when the hatchet slipped off of my leg and jarred my ankle. The pain was sharp and sudden, replaced soon after by a dull ache. I shifted, stiff and cramped from sleeping upright against the wall. The inside of the cave was almost completely dark. Only a little sunlight filtered in through the barrier and the outer chamber. I could tell it was day, but not the time or what condition I was in. As the night’s events flooded back to me, I listened for my pursuers. There was nothing. No sounds at all, other than my own breathing and the sighing of the forest.
Slowly I uncoiled my stiff frame and reached for my bag to get my torch. With it I examined myself for injuries. My hands were filthy, mud caked under the nails and all over the sleeves and body of my still wet coat. I shrugged it off and noticed a big rip on the knee of my leggings. Under it was a large smear of dried blood and several grazes from where I’d fallen. I tried to remove my boot and bit my lip as the pain thundered to the surface. My ankle was very swollen, constricted by the tightly laced hiking boot. Bit by bit I eased the laces open and slowly removed the boot, wincing all the while. Under my soaking wet sock my skin was smashed-berry purple. The imprints of my boot were like scars on the skin, angry lines pressed into the livid flesh.
It was only once the pain in my ankle started to subside to a just-bearable ache that I realised how cold it was. Reaching up to feel my throbbing eye, I felt the ends of my hair crackle with frost. I felt mostly fine and that was incredibly worrying. To be that cold and not even be shivering suggested the onset of hypothermia. I needed to get a fire going, quickly.
Grunting quietly with the effort, I dragged myself across the cave floor. I’d not yet laid a fire in the hole and my hands were like those of a mannequin as I fumbled with split wood and dried weeds. I had a push firestarter and jabbed it hard into the materials. The sight of the yellow flames made me tear up in gratitude.
While the fire got going I removed my wet clothes. I pulled items from my rucksack at random and put them on. In cleaner, dry clothes I dried my hair with the filthy T-shirt and pulled my sleeping bag around me for warmth, stretching my filthy hands towards the fire.
The fire mesmerised me and I soon started to doze. It was an effort to rouse myself enough to take stock of my situation and immediate resources. I had in many ways been lucky. I’d not lost any food or important tools in the fire. I had however lost the bulk of my clothes, including thermal underwear, the thickest of my jumpers and various T-shirts and pairs of leggings. I had, to my name, three complete sets of clothes with some extra items of little to no use. These comprised two pairs of fleece-lined sport leggings, a regular pair, two T-shirts, a jumper, underwear (one set thermal) and a pair of shorts. Aside from this I had some odd socks, tank tops and a single glove. One set of clothes was currently plastered in filth.
My everyday washing things had also been in the tipi when it was burned. I no longer had my toothbrush or remnants of toothpaste, shampoo bar or microfibre sanitary pads. There had been some soap in the portacabin box, so that was at least something.
Water was the immediate worry, aside from getting my body up to temperature. I’d been carrying a bottle of water on me during the day. It was still in my rucksack and about half full. My primitive water purifier was dismantled and in the cave with me, empty. I was nowhere near the stream but there was enough snow around that the lack of water didn’t worry me. What did worry me was that I couldn’t get to it; I could barely drag myself across the cave floor.
Going outside on my wounded ankle would be begging to be caught. And getting caught meant … what? I had run for my life to reach the cave. It had felt like being seen, being captured, meant death. Was that just my paranoia, my fear from being chased screaming in my veins? Would the others really kill me if I strayed outside?
The higher part of my mind, the part that always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, remained unconvinced. We had been on the island for just under a fortnight of extra time. Two weeks was not enough to drive sane, normal people to murder. The rest of me, the parts that had brought me through the woods and saved me, knew differently. Two weeks wasn’t a lot in a normal life. We were far from that. As quickly as our situation had devolved, so had we all. Dislike into hatred. Passive aggression into physical attack. To top that off with homebrew, hallucinogens and the threat of starvation … I could not be sure what the others would do to me. I wasn’t even sure they had planned any of this, or if it had simply happened. Mob mentality. A pack chasing me through the woods because that was its nature.
So going outside was, for now, impossible. I had to wait until I could not only stand or walk, but run. How long would that take? I had no idea.
I went through my supplies and found a packet of ibuprofen from the portacabin. I popped two tablets out and took them with a sip of my precious water. It was weird, tasting the bitter dryness of pre-packaged medicine. I only hoped they would bring the swelling down in my ankle.
With my small mirror lost in the fire I used a spoon to try and get a look at my eye. In the tiny upside-down reflection I could see nothing wrong aside from a cut over my eyelid. I could feel how swollen it was. I moistened the corner of a stray sock and cleaned up the area around the cut, then applied a bit of antiseptic cream. I did the same for my knee.
This tiny amount of effort left me exhausted, but I knew I had to eat something. My body needed energy to heal, to heat itself. I opened a tin of peach slices and poured the syrup into a cup. After eating half the fruit I sipped the sickly juice before covering the open tin.
Fed, I lay down beside the fire and let my mind wander into the dancing flames.
I must have slept again because the next moment I was jerking awake. My eyes snapped open and my heart thundered in my chest. It took a few seconds for me to realise what had woken me: footsteps, crashing through the undergrowth.
I strained my ears and tried frantically to gauge how close the footsteps were, if they were coming closer or moving away. I couldn’t tell. Frozen, half lying, half upright, I heard Duncan’s voice from frighteningly nearby.
‘Did you search over there, under the brambles?’
Frank replied from further away. ‘She’s not there. Maybe she went to the crew cabin?’
‘Then the others’ll find her. Keep looking.’
I heard slashing sounds, a stick beating at the undergrowth. Was he near the entrance to the cave? I didn’t dare move to peer into the outer chamber. The ru
stle of my sleeping bag seemed impossibly loud.
After a while the slashing stopped. ‘Give me that flask,’ Duncan said.
Footsteps approached and I heard the rattling of plastic on metal, the sigh as someone drank deeply.
‘Keeps the chills off,’ Frank said approvingly.
‘Tastes like crap though,’ Duncan said, smothering a cough.
‘Better than nothing.’
‘Yeah … better than nothing.’
More crashing footsteps. More people entering the clearing.
‘Anything?’ Duncan demanded.
‘No sign.’ That was Andrew. ‘She’s been in there at some point,’ he continued. ‘The blankets were moved and there’s an empty box. She had something out from under the beds.’
Duncan swore. ‘So she does have a stash somewhere. Probably sitting there laughing at us, grubbing up all the food.’
I nearly did laugh then, looking at the half-empty tin of peaches and my own filth-encrusted hands. Oh yeah, I was really living it up.
‘Anything from Shaun and Zoe?’ Gill said. Clearly she’d been partnered with Andrew.
‘Haven’t seen them,’ Frank said.
‘Probably got him building a cot or some shit,’ Andrew said. ‘Boy’s pussy-whipped.’
‘Can you blame him though? She’s a hot little number,’ Duncan said. ‘You would if you could.’
Gill must’ve huffed or looked at them a certain way, because there was a smattering of smutty laughter.
‘You’re not bad yourself, no worries. Nice tits anyway,’ Andrew said. ‘Better than Maxine. She’s a bit too much like Maddy – tight-arsed.’
‘You don’t like a tight arse, Andy?’ Duncan said, and Gill giggled. ‘I say Frank takes Maxine, and Gill, you like Andrew, don’t you? You two can shack up,’ Duncan said.
‘If he can keep up with me,’ Gill said, prompting a whistle, possibly from Duncan.
‘Who says I want Maxine?’ Frank complained. ‘Just cos I’m old?’
‘And what about you, Duncan?’ Andrew said. ‘You hoping Shaun decides to share his girl?’
‘Nah, I’m saving myself for Maddy,’ Duncan said, and I heard a nasty edge beneath his humorous tone. ‘Give her something to shut her up.’
They laughed. I felt my whole body clench and go hot with mingled humiliation and anger. But under that there was fear, cold, lingering fear. Even as I heard them walk away it didn’t dissipate. If anything it grew. When there was nothing but silence to be heard, I slid out of my sleeping bag and sat by the dying fire, hugging myself. By its flickering light I finally checked my camera for damage. There was a scratch on the lens but the tough cover had protected it aside from that. The tiny light on the back still shone. I had the other power pack, not that I could use it in the cave. But I had it, for what that was worth.
I was safe, for the moment. Still, hearing them talk about me had made me feel worse. It was like they weren’t talking about a person, not really. They said my name like it belonged to a thing, a thing that was less than human. A thing they might use and break as easily as if I were a can to be emptied and crushed. Any thought that I might have overreacted at the beach left me. If they caught me, I would not be safe.
I thought of Zoe, who’d saved me, endangering herself in the process. As much as I wanted to believe I had one friend on the island, Zoe had proven to be fickle. I worried for her; with her pregnancy advancing she’d be in danger from complications. Not only that but she’d become more reliant on the others. If they really were abusing fly agaric to the extent it seemed, then they wouldn’t be that dependable. Hopefully Maxine would be sensible, though it looked like she was on the outs with the rest of them, filling my old role as camp scapegoat. I was something else now – an enemy. Prey. In any event I couldn’t help either of them. My only focus had to be keeping myself alive.
I knew that the only way I might survive being on the island was to hide, avoid the others and wait for rescue. Eventually, somehow, the real world would have to reach us. Even if it wasn’t the production company, surely a boat would pass. A fisherman would see us, a coastguard helicopter would go searching. The others all had families and those families would not abandon them. I could only hope that when rescue came, I could seize my chance and get myself off the bloody island. In the meantime I needed to be smarter than the others. I had to cover my tracks, keep myself fed and as healthy as possible. An opportunity would come. I just had to be patient.
*
The next few days passed slowly.
I couldn’t walk or do anything much but lie on the ground, resting my ankle and watching the level of water in my bottle go down. It felt like I was constantly thirsty, but I reasoned that this was just my mind dwelling on the water situation. I tried to keep my mind occupied but couldn’t focus on reading or on mending my ripped leggings.
Occasionally a search party came close to the cave, but after that first time they didn’t hang around long. It seemed as though they were looking elsewhere, for the moment. There was never any activity after dark and I wondered if they’d had as terrible a time as I had running through the woods that first night. I wondered how long they would keep it up for if they didn’t find me soon. They had to be worried about their food reserves, rationing to make them last. How much energy could they afford to waste on hunting me? How long before they turned their sights inward and onto their own survival? Not soon enough for me.
At last my bruises faded to yellow and my ankle no longer hurt when I stood or crouched. I had no way to know how it would do under strain until I left the cave.
Going outside again was an experience I was unprepared for. I waited until after nightfall before quietly sneaking out into the clearing. It felt too open, too exposed after being underground for the past few days. The sheer number of directions danger could come from paralysed me. Every swaying branch and rattling stick falling to the ground made my eyes swivel around me. I forced myself to breathe, to regain some control over myself.
My two main aims were to find water and dispose of my waste. I’d been using a bucket for my latrine and the smell was becoming an issue, even with cold ashes layered over the contents. I left the bucket in the cave opening and crept a good distance away. There I dug a hole and then returned for the bucket. Once emptied, I rinsed it with semi-melted snow. With some leaves over the spot it looked untouched.
Water was a different struggle. There was plenty of snow, but camouflaging each patch of scraped-up snow took time. My nerves were fraying all the while and I was starting to worry they’d break entirely before my work was through. The last thing I did was hide the solar pack, hoping to get some charge for my dead camera.
Before returning to the safety of the cave I realised that my footprints were now all over the clearing. I’d crawled into the cave the night of the chase, and that alone had probably saved me. Now though I could see my prints mingling with those of the others. I cursed myself for being so stupid. Would they notice if they came back? Maybe not. But if I continued to leave the cave the prints would quickly build up, giving me away. I had to be careful. I went to the side of the cave to re-enter, hiding my route under the brush. I realised I’d been holding my breath only when I replaced the panel and a sigh left me in a rush.
I now had water enough for a while, but I knew I had to plan for the snow melting away and for a lack of rain. How would I get water then, without crossing the island to reach the stream?
The cold was also becoming an issue. In my tipi I had been able to keep a fire going merrily and that had, mostly, kept the chill at bay. Now I had to make my fires small, in case the smoke started to escape through the panel, giving away my position. I was also lacking my thermal underclothes and my heavy winter jumper. Although the cave was well insulated above me, there was a creeping through-draft that quickly ate up the heat from the small fire. I needed more layers of clothing and something to block the crack to the outer cave. Continuing as I was would mean losing calories to
the cold.
The answer came to me after days spent shivering, as close to the fire as I could get without bursting into flames: the portacabin.
I’d searched it already, true, as had the others, but had any of us found their clothes? I went over what I remembered of the inside. I’d searched the cabinets in the bathroom, the kitchenette, the console; like the others my main concern had been food. Yet I hadn’t found any clothes, spare bedding or even towels. Either the others had already found them before I got there, or they were stored somewhere that hadn’t been immediately obvious.
I tried to remember if I’d seen the others wearing new clothes when they’d come to the beach to demand the book. After a year I could probably list every item they owned from memory. I didn’t think anyone had been wearing anything new. I thought over the storage places I’d searched. None of them had seemed like places bedding would be stored. There had to be a wardrobe or closet somewhere in the cabin.
It was asking for trouble, but I had little choice. I was spending every waking hour trying to keep warm and failing; I needed to remedy that as soon as possible. I couldn’t afford to get ill or waste calories on shivering – I needed every ounce of my energy to put into survival. I needed cloth for filtering my water, for bandages, food preservation and any number of other things. Not only that but any resource I could get my hands on was something the others wouldn’t have. If I could enrich my own cache while putting them at a disadvantage, I could increase my odds.
If it was to be survival of the fittest, I would play to win.
Chapter 28
The day I crossed the first of February off in my diary, a little part of me died. I was going back over the old year, day by day, reusing the diary. One month. We had waited a month to be rescued. Still, we were on our own. For two weeks I’d been inside my cave, recovering and then waiting for the right time to get to the portacabin. Marking the first day of a new month pushed me over the edge. I had to do it. I would never feel ready. There was no being ready for the sensation of being so exposed, so afraid as I was just standing outside the cave. While I waited, the others might well be enjoying the items I desperately needed.
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