‘It’s going,’ said the pilot.
‘Finished by morning, you think?’
‘You mean will I get it built before I check out?’
‘I didn't say that.’
‘It's coming along fine,’ the pilot assured him. ‘Couple more hours, all being well.’
Keeping his voice steady, James said, ‘You’re clearly some kind of genius, huh?’
‘Not really, I could build one of these things in my sleep. But something tells me by your tone that the transmitter isn’t your primary concern.’
James shrugged.
‘What is it?’ Gibson asked.
James took a seat on the soft sand, slightly agitated with the trees at his back. He waited for Eric to reheat the soldering iron before speaking. ‘When’s the last time you checked under the blanket?’
‘I haven’t,’ the pilot admitted. ‘Couldn’t bring myself to.’
Leaning over the pilot’s leg, James lifted the sheet, careful to keep the wound hidden from its owner. He recoiled at the stench. The flaps of loose grey skin confirmed the spread of infection, the sweating gash oozing a viscousy liquid, neither blood nor mucus. The lips had darkened to the predicted angry maroon, the infected area in the late stages of bacterial build-up.
‘First light, Gibson,’ he said quietly. ‘First light, I’m snorkeling the wreckage.'
‘It’s okay, lad, you don’t need to bullshit me. I’m ready.’
‘Christ,’ James cursed softly.
As the two of them took a trace of solace in a moment of solicitous silence, they noticed a silhouetted figure climbing from one of the tents. Female and slim: Abbey yawning.
‘What on earth are you lot still doing up?’ Her voice was small in an early hours kind of way.
‘Back at you, sister,’ countered Gibson.
‘Can’t sleep,’ she replied. ‘Thought I might go for a walk.’
James forced himself to shy away from Abbey’s bed look; shaggy hair, sleepy eyes. ‘Walk?’ he asked. ‘Walk where?’
‘I won’t go far, boss,’ she smiled. ‘Just want to work off some energy.’
‘I don’t like you walking out there alone.’
‘He’s right, gal,’ the pilot cut in. ‘Think of all them cannibals – canneebaaals – we've seen!’
‘Gibson, not helping,’ James admonished.
Placing a hand on James’s arm, Abbey said, ‘Come on, James, what do you think is going to happen? I’ll be fine.’
He wanted to tell her about the light he'd seen, but panic was nobody’s friend. ‘I would just prefer it if we all stuck together.’
‘I’ll go to the end of the bay,’ she smiled sleepily. ‘No further, I promise.’
‘Just stay attentive, okay? And the first sign of anything amiss, you scream, got it?’
‘What’s got into you tonight?’
‘And stick close to the water,’ he added hastily. ‘Stay away from the trees.’
Frowning, she walked down towards the shore. He watched her until she slipped into the night and out of sight.
‘What’s going on, lad?’ the pilot asked. ‘Gal’s going for a walk on the beach, not downtown Baghdad.’
James scratched his stubble thoughtfully. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘To the grave, which by all accounts isn’t going to be too long.’
Sitting back down, he said quietly, ‘Three bays over, I saw a light in the trees. It was only there for a second but I know I saw it. Somebody was out there, watching us.’
‘Anybody else see it?’
‘Just me.’
‘What about Sol, he’s never around?’
‘He was tonight,’ James muttered. ‘Said he’d been here for over an hour.’
‘He had,’ the pilot confirmed.
‘Then it wasn’t him. I’m telling you, Gibson, somebody was there.’
‘I can promise you, lad, I’ve been here all day, but everybody’s been coming and going, it could’ve been any of them.’
‘Shit,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s weird, Gibson. I know what I saw.’
‘Maybe this island is messing with your head.’
‘Yeah, I had all that from Oli. Do I sound insane to you?’
‘No, you do not, which leaves one possibility.’ James met the pilot’s bloodshot eyes. ‘You saw a light.’
Gibson went back to fiddling with the transmitter as Eric came wandering coyly back, the soldering iron held out in front of him at arm's length. ‘Gibson Pilot, is it okay for me to come back now?’
‘Come on, lad,’ the pilot smiled. ‘Let’s get this thing wrapped up.’
‘Are we going to be able to use it tomorrow?’ James asked.
‘The higher the ground the better,’ said Gibson. ‘If you and Oli fancied a trek again, the top of the hill will be the best place for it.’
James grinned. ‘He’ll be thrilled.’
Scanning the opaque sand he could see Abbey nowhere. But it was a long bay, and she did say she wouldn’t go near the trees. He checked his watch: almost 2am.
She’d be fine.
41
Porcelain skin.
Thick curls of dark hair.
He liked breaking things, things of beauty, and upon impulse he would act with unnerving efficiency, the prospect presenting itself on a sweet-smelling bed of petals. Her pale skin and slim body suggested eminence in variety, the opportunity unmarred by pestilence or noise.
From the trees he watched...
The perfect calm.
The graceful pace of her step against the quietly lapping water.
...as she carefully examined her surroundings, residual emotion flowing from her in waves.
With every footfall, she drew nearer to the tree line, his insistence for silence unmarred.
She would not ruin it for him.
He would not allow that.
Closer to the trees she drew, a heavy and black smudge of burden pressed against her good sense.
A chance peek over her shoulder.
Another silent footstep.
Closer.
Directly in front of him, she stopped.
Anybody could wish for damnation. Anybody could refute it. In this moment, she was of the wishing kind, though she didn’t yet know it. Close enough to touch, she admired the view.
He admired it with her.
Sharing was about to become part of her life, the very meaning to her existence. Sharing would be her final gift.
At breaking dawn, the resilient group of “survivors” would wake, the persistent wedge of anxiety driven through the very heart of their hope. It was about to begin. Begin with the translucent skin before him, and the urgent desire to destroy something beautiful.
Porcelain skin.
Thick curls of dark hair.
It was about to begin.
42
At first light, James hit the sunken wreckage with the snorkeling gear. As he’d hoped the morning was calm, the only sounds drifting across the sand coming from the groaning pilot, the blankets drawn up over the flanks of his tent.
With no breeze, the water was as still as it was warm. He waded out wearing only a pair of board shorts, plump fish shooting between his legs. Most of the larger portions of the wreckage had thankfully settled close to shore, the nearest no more than ten feet deep. Parts had broken the water's surface, too large to be engulfed.
Strapping the mask to his face he disappeared beneath the surface in time to spy a plethora of fleeing fish. Only some were spectacular, but all were graceful in the arcing shafts of the immature sun.
Clawing deeper he hauled himself into a long flat section of what looked like the hull, the snagged form of a cadaver startling him as he glided into the luggage compartment. It was a man, one side of his face torn away. Sea creatures too small to know better probed the corpse with curiosity, while some of the larger ones fled into nearby crevices. No luggage remained.
For over an hour he swam between the three main sections of
the fallen craft, each one offering little in the way of baggage or medical supplies, but he hadn’t struck out completely. Strapped around his shoulder he towed along two pieces of hand luggage and gripped tightly in each hand were two suitcases, courtesy of – according to their respective nametags – a Mr Adams and a Mr Zachariah.
He surfaced to pandemonium.
Something was happening within the camp, a screaming, a bellowing. He could hear his name being called, Abbey’s too, a throng of bedlam journeying out across the bay.
Bounding through the shallow water, he crashed panting onto the sand, luggage forgotten, pushing past the incoherent Oli, the inaudible Elaine, and in nothing more than a haze he was by Gibson’s side. The man writhed in agony as Anthony and Sebastian attempted to pin him to the sand. Glaring on in confusion were Eric and the silent girl, their faces a similarity of age, despite the years between them.
‘Get them out of here!’ James screamed.
Senses clicking, Elaine led them away, her hands placed gently over the girl’s ears.
‘Gibson,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s James.’ The pilot’s rolling eyes drifted in his direction, any sense of recognition hidden beneath several thick layers of pain. ‘I’m going to look at the wound, okay. Try to calm down.’
He lifted the blanket, the wound visibly much the same as he’d last seen it.
‘Jesus,’ Sebastian gasped.
‘Come on, Gibson, stay with me.’ Then to the others: ‘Does anyone here have any medical knowledge? Anyone…anything at all?’
A collage of frightened faces peered back at him.
‘Look at him!’ Anthony bellowed. ‘Do something.’
James hesitated, scanned the beach. Where the hell was Abbey? He needed her! As the world slowed down he closed his eyes, blocked out the screams and the curses. The moment he’d been dreading had arrived. He wasn’t prepared for something of this magnitude, neither by expertise nor equipment.
Anthony’s pleas had become indistinct, as too had the pilot’s screams. He looked to the birth-marked man, watched his slow-moving lips silently bellowing for action, and Gibson, whose own cries should’ve been bringing down the trees. Sebastian was the only one to remain composed, his eyes limpid pools of calm.
Snapping out of his ethereal state, all five senses returned to him at once like a slap in the face. With somebody else’s arm, he reached into the toolbox and withdrew the serrated saw. Somebody else’s fingers gripped the handle, and it was somebody else’s idea to remove the blanket and position the instrument’s teeth above the pilot’s wound. He glanced up at the student. ‘Oli, hold his legs down. Whatever you do, don’t let go.’
‘I…I can’t, man!’ The student's horrified face was sheathed in sweat. ‘Not me, no way!’
‘Hey!’ Anthony snapped. ‘Do it.’
‘Oli,’ James said calmly. ‘You need to do this now or the man is going to die, do you understand? Sit on his legs and face away.’
‘You can’t do this, James. We…we can find drugs, we can -’
‘It’s too late for drugs! There’s only one way to stop the infection, and we need to do it right now before he has a heart attack!’
Oli stood fast.
‘Look, man!’ James roared. ‘Take a look. The infection’s eating him alive, and we have no way of stopping it. This is what it’s all about, right here! This is where you prove to the jocks you’re every bit the man they say you’re not!’
The sobbing student straddled the pilot’s legs and held them steady.
Exhaling heavily, James placed the saw on the sand and tore a strip from the blanket, wrapping it above Gibson’s wound as a tourniquet. Retrieving the saw, he replaced the teeth an inch above the wound, an inch below the tourniquet. Sweat was trickling into his eyes.
He looked to Sebastian, then to Anthony, and finally back to Sebastian, their subtle nods of approval jarring him. Then, hesitating no longer…
He thrust forwards, the jagged edge of the saw sinking deep into the pilot’s thigh with the first incision. Gibson’s screams amplified as the cut opened up, blood erupting from the new wound. Dragging the saw back, he thrust again, this time cutting into the tough sinuous flesh of the thick quad muscle. A third thrust finally found bone, grinding into the femur and rupturing the muscle further. Blood spurted from the next drive, shooting across James’s shoulder and splattering his face. The pilot had fallen eerily quiet, eyes rolled back into his head.
More laborious thrusts and the huge bone split in two, Anthony taking the brunt of the spray to the face. Another moment of grinding commenced, before finally the brutal display came to an end. He instructed Oli to release the pilot’s legs and threw the dripping saw aside. No longer any need to hold Gibson down, Anthony and Sebastian stood back as James tugged the appendage loose, free-flowing blood squirting from the wound. The pilot was fast losing consciousness.
‘Anthony!’ he screamed, ‘Keep him awake. Don’t let him pass out.’
Leaning over the dying man Anthony lightly slapped Gibson's cheek, the man’s eyes popping open groggily. Gripping each end of the tourniquet James pulled it taut once more, the blood continuing to flow onto the sand.
‘How’s he doing, Anthony?’
Anthony peeled up the man’s eyelids. ‘He’s sliding! I can’t keep him awake.’
‘Keep trying. Oli, get something to put under his thigh. Let’s keep the leg up, maybe gravity can help.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Anthony intervened. ‘His pulse has gone.’
‘Shit!’
Springing back to Gibson’s side, he held his ear to the pilot’s chest.
Nothing.
There was nothing.
Interlocking his fingers facedown, he began the artificial beats of CPR, convinced the real ones could be reignited.
‘It’s not looking good, chief,’ said Sebastian.
‘One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand, yeah thanks, Sebastian.’
Ear to chest.
Still nothing.
‘One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand, come on, man!’
‘James…’ Oli muttered.
‘One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand…’
‘It’s over, James,’ Oli said again.
‘No! No…One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand…’
This time Sebastian placed a steadying hand on James's shoulder. ‘Come on, chief…he’s gone. Let him be.’
Springing to his feet James turned his back on the scene and ran bloodied fingers through his hair. ‘Fuck!’
He paced back and forth, the enormity of his decision dropping like a lead weight in his stomach. In the spur of the moment he’d made a choice. Drugs may well have turned up in a suitcase tomorrow, a rescue team could’ve well hit the beach the day after, but right then, right at that moment, there’d been him, several terrified and clueless individuals, and a serrated saw. In the heat of it, he believed he’d taken the correct path. But now...
Turning to the trees, he vomited.
‘James?’ said Elaine.
Standing behind him was Eric’s mother. He hadn’t seen her return. Without another word she put her arms around him, hugged him fiercely.
‘It’s okay, James,’ she murmured. ‘You’re not responsible for everybody here.’
‘It’s not okay,’ he replied quietly. ‘It’s not okay.’
She continued to hold him tight.
‘He trusted me, Elaine.’ Releasing her, he took a step back and inspected Gibson’s mutilated body, the others splattered in the man’s blood. Oli was still crying quietly.
‘Are you going to be okay?’ Elaine asked.
James eyed his blood-smeared palms. ‘What do you think?’ he said quietly.
*
In the aftermath of the amateur amputation, Gibson Sommerfield’s body had been re-covered with the blanket, the leg roughly pushed back into position.
Anthony had disappear
ed, probably to get cleaned up. Everybody else stood around looking remorseful and dejected. They had just slipped from eleven to ten, and the notion wasn’t lost on anybody.
‘You okay, chief?’ said Sebastian, sitting down next to James.
‘Never better,’ James muttered.
‘Pretty amazing thing you did back there.’
James snorted. ‘Killing a man? Not one of my best achievements.’
‘Depends how you look at it,’ said the South African. ‘I thought it was pretty heroic.’
James didn't react.
‘You want to break it to Abbey?’ asked Sebastian. ‘Or you want me to do it?’
‘Abbey? I haven’t seen her all morning.’ In fact, if he thought hard enough about it, he hadn’t seen her since last night when she decided to go for a walk. When Sebastian had no answer he looked to Oli, Elaine. In unison they shrugged, and all he could picture was the light in the trees, the faintest glimmer of their mysterious voyeur.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Oli. ‘I haven’t seen her.’
‘I haven’t either,’ said Elaine. ‘And I was one of the first up.’
‘Shit.’ Sebastian’s input. ‘What you thinking, chief?’
‘Look, she can’t have gone far,’ said Oli. ‘We’re on a desert island for Christ’s sake.’
‘It’s a big island, darl,’ Elaine challenged.
James held up his hand, hushing everyone. ‘The island is about five miles around. That’s about the size of a small town.’
‘Seems to me everybody’s blowing this out of proportion,’ said Anthony re-emerging from the trees, shirtless, free of blood. ‘Do I need to remind everybody just how unpredictable the female of the species is? The woman has probably gone off to the lagoon for a swim.’
‘You know this for a fact?’ James asked.
‘No, sir, I do not. But I do know I’m the only one speaking any sense around here. Ya’ll have your heads mashed up, convinced Little Miss Wet Dream is in all kinds of trouble, when actually, she’s off picking fruit somewhere inland, whistling with the birds.’
James noticed that when Anthony spoke, nobody intervened, like he commanded an unnatural authority nobody knew how to cope with.
Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both! Page 22