by Jason Ayres
Josh went back into the villa, closing the door behind him and feeling grateful for the air conditioning that was keeping his room cool. He planned to go and explore the rest of the building, but first he needed to get dressed.
He opened the wardrobe he had found the clothes in earlier and picked out a light, white cotton shirt and some matching white shorts which would be perfect for the climate. He also picked out a nice, old-fashioned straw hat which would give him some protection from the sun. Slipping out of his silk pyjamas, he dressed quickly and then headed into the bathroom to shave and brush his teeth.
Then he headed for the bedroom door, eager to see what lay beyond, but before he could grasp the handle, it opened in front of him to reveal a middle-aged woman with blonde, curly hair.
She was dressed in a figure-hugging blue leotard and looked as if she had just been working out. She certainly looked to have a great figure for a woman who at a guess was in her fifties, but he didn’t know who she was. Some instinct inside told him that he had seen her before, but once again the memories proved elusive.
“Darling,” she purred, “You’re awake. Are you feeling better?”
Darling? Was this woman his girlfriend, or even his wife? Josh wasn’t sure what to say.
“Uh…I’m not sure,” he began.
“It’s OK, honey,” said the woman reassuringly. “You can’t remember anything, I know. It’s an after-effect of the virus. It will soon pass.”
“The virus?” asked Josh. That was another thing to add to the list of things he couldn’t remember.
“Don’t worry, come through and have some breakfast and I’ll explain everything,” she replied, leading him through the bedroom door towards a large, open-plan kitchen/dining area.
In the centre of the room was a large, wooden table set for two, covered in a sumptuous range of fresh fruits, breads, cereals and yogurts.
“How do you like your eggs done?” she asked.
“Soft-boiled,” he instinctively replied. He had remembered that alright. “Listen, I’m really sorry, but I can’t remember your name.”
“That’s OK,” she laughed. “I’ll forgive you under the circumstances. I’m Vanessa. Your wife.”
“My wife?” he replied, glancing at the ring on his finger, as Vanessa popped two eggs into a boiling pan of water on the hotplate on the side.
“Of course,” she replied. “Now, I know you probably want to know why you can’t remember anything, so you sit down there, help yourself to some fruit and I’ll try and explain.”
He sat down on one of the pine chairs and looked eagerly at the food in front of him. He certainly was feeling ravenously hungry and it all looked very appealing.
“This is a lovely spread,” he said. “Did you do it all yourself?”
“I did,” she said. “You’ve been poorly. I want to help you build your strength up.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “I can’t remember where we are, you see. When I looked outside earlier, I wondered if we might be in some luxury holiday resort like Sandals, but then I realised we couldn’t be because I couldn’t see any other buildings.”
“That’s because there aren’t any,” she replied. “It’s just you and I here.”
“And where is here, exactly?”
“The island,” she replied.
“Which island?” he asked.
“Just the island,” she replied. “Now eat up and I’ll tell you more about what’s happened.”
Josh felt a little wary at her evasiveness over their location but decided to leave it for now and let her explain while he got stuck into the food. He put some pieces of pineapple and some strawberries into a bowl and began to eat.
“It’s just the two of us here, is it?” he asked.
“It’s just the two of us anywhere,” she said. “Do you remember anything about what happened?”
“You’re going to have to fill me in,” he replied, his mind a total blank.
“There was a plague,” she said sadly. “A lethal virus engineered in a laboratory by a crazy scientist who wanted to hold the world to ransom. When the governments refused to play ball, he released it.”
“Who was he?” asked Josh.
“His name was Henry Jones,” she replied. “He was a very evil man. In addition, he was completely mad, and let me tell you, extreme insanity and a lethal pathogen make for a highly dangerous combination.”
“You said it was just the two of us left,” he said. “Do you mean in the whole world?”
“I’m afraid so,” she replied sadly. “It was the perfect virus. Everyone else in the world is dead.”
“What makes us so special? Why are we immune?”
“We’re not,” she replied. “I worked at the lab where the virus was developed and managed to smuggle out a small amount of the cure, but it was only enough for the two of us. And you were out of town when it happened. The virus spread across the world like wildfire and you caught it before I could get to you. I only just reached you in time to administer it.”
“Out of town?” he asked. “Which town? And how did we end up here?”
“You were ill for many weeks,” she replied, “but we had to get away from the heavily populated areas. The dead were piling up everywhere and the smell and the decay was appalling. We would have died of some other disease if we had stayed. I managed to get you down to the harbour and onto a yacht which I managed to sail here.”
“You still haven’t told me where here is.”
“You were actually right earlier about it being part of a holiday resort, but it’s not Sandals. It’s one of a number of private and exclusive islands that you can book for the ultimate desert island experience. We stayed here for our honeymoon many years ago and it seemed as good a place as any to head for.”
She took the pan off the stove and removed his eggs, placing them in a double eggcup.
Looking at all the food in front of him, a thought struck Josh.
“If what you’re saying is true – and everyone in the world is dead – then where has all this fresh food come from?”
She looked at him and paused temporarily as she thought of an answer. She could hardly tell him the truth – that she just nipped back through time at her convenience once a week to sail across to a supermarket on a neighbouring island.
“It’s all done by food replicators,” she replied. “This resort has got the most advanced technology in the whole world. In fact, the entire island is self-sufficient, all powered by solar and wave power. With the replicators we can make whatever we need. It means we can spend the rest of our lives here – it’s our own private paradise. No wonder rich film stars used to pay a million dollars a week to stay here.”
She had lied about the replicators. Food replication technology had been coming along nicely, another of her projects from Canberra, but it wasn’t that good. Never mind, she would just have to gloss over it now and if he got suspicious or asked to see how they worked she’d just wipe his memory again.
She had already had to wipe his memory three times when he started asking awkward questions. Eventually she would get it right.
For the moment, he seemed to accept what she was saying. The conversation had certainly gone better than it had on the three previous occasions. She was learning to anticipate his responses each time.
Soon she would try and make the move on him she had dreamt about for so long. It was no coincidence that she had chosen to wear her sexiest leotard, but before that there was a little more business to take care of.
As he tucked into his eggs, another thought struck him.
“If these food replicators are so good, why do you have to cook the eggs? Can’t you just replicate them precooked?”
“They’re never as good that way,” she said. “It’s a bit like trying to microwave them in those old, plastic holders. They come out all rubbery. The food replicators are good, but they have their limitations.”
This wasn’t working out too well. Pe
rhaps if she did have to wipe his memory again she’d have to stock up on tinned food instead: at least she could explain that more easily.
“Now, while you’re drinking your orange juice, you need to take one of these,” she said, taking a small medicine bottle from one of the kitchen surfaces and tipping out a small, yellow pill.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something you need to take every day,” she replied. “It’s the only thing that keeps the virus in your body dormant. Without it, it would mutate and kill you.”
Josh felt a little sceptical about this, but he decided to take her word for it. He put the pill in his mouth and knocked it back with a swig of orange juice.
Now Vanessa was ready to make her move. She sidled seductively towards him along the table, with a suggestive look in her eye.
“Since you’re feeling better, how about we go back to bed for a while?”
He couldn’t put a finger on it, but something to Josh didn’t feel quite right about all of this. Something had been nagging at his mind throughout breakfast, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Now it suddenly came to him. If she really was his wife, wouldn’t she have known how he liked his eggs?
“Listen, Vanessa, would you mind if we waited a while. I know it sounds a bit old-fashioned, but what with the memory loss, I feel like I need time to get to know you again.”
“Of course, my love,” she replied, trying her best to hide the disappointment in her voice. “We’ve all the time in the world. We can get to know each other all over again, like we did when we first met.”
“I would like that,” he said, more out of politeness than anything else. He really wasn’t feeling anything towards her at all.
“And now maybe you can show me around the island,” he added.
“It’s an absolute paradise,” she said. “You’re going to love it here.”
“I hope so,” he replied.
He really felt that he ought to: after all, what more could anyone ask for? From what he had seen already it was a complete paradise. He had everything he needed, including a wife who seemed to adore him, even if he couldn’t remember anything about their life together. What wasn’t there to like?
But in the back of his mind there was a nagging doubt and he couldn’t stop thinking the same phrase over and over again.
Something’s wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
July 2058
Days passed and Josh slowly began to get used to life on the island. He really had no cause for complaint about his surroundings. It truly was the idyllic paradise it had first seemed.
On his second day he set out to explore the island, a task that didn’t take more than a morning. He had been right in his assessment the first time he had gone outside, that the whole island was extremely low-lying.
There were no cliffs or notable rock formations at all. The perimeter was just one unbroken shore of pure, white sand which he discovered he could walk all the way around in barely an hour. No wonder people had spent so much money to stay here: there was certainly no danger of slipping on any seaweed or encountering a stray crisp packet blowing around like there was back home.
Other than the villa and a small rowing boat Josh found on the other side of the island, there were no other indications at all that there had ever been a human presence on the island. It was the ultimate unspoilt paradise.
Beyond the tree line at the edge of the shore the vegetation was thicker, full of the sort of tropical plants you would find in the reptile house at a wildlife park. As he walked through a natural path towards the centre of the island, he found that the ground sloped gently upwards and there were one or two small streams running towards the shore and a few pools of fresh water which various lizards and birds were drinking from.
It didn’t take long to reach the centre of the island, which couldn’t have been more than about ten yards above sea level. Josh felt that this was slightly concerning, as there wouldn’t be much protection in the event of a tsunami. He wondered if this area had been affected by the 2004 event. There was no sign of it, but then would there be after more than fifty years? Nature was very resilient and would have soon bounced back.
He had asked Vanessa again about their location, but she had continued to be cagey. One of the reasons he had gone to the highest point of the island was to see if he could derive any clues, but the trees were so thick here he couldn’t see much. He had seen more during his walk around the shoreline, but all he could see was a string of similar small islands stretching away into the distance with no sign of any large land mass.
Even if there had been, if what Vanessa had said about the end of days was true, then there would be no point attempting to go back to any sort of former larger populated area. But was it true? He only had her word for it and his doubts about her had not receded despite spending several days in her company which wasn’t in any way disagreeable.
They had dined together every evening, gone for long walks on the beach and talked for hours about the old days as she filled him in on the details of the life he could no longer remember.
She had also been more than willing to answer all his questions he had about how the apocalypse had occurred, even going so far as to showing him some archive news footage she had recorded while the plague was spreading across the world.
It all seemed genuine enough, but Josh knew that footage like that was easy to fake so it wasn’t concrete proof. He had suggested sailing to the mainland to see the devastation first-hand, but she had advised against it, citing the risk of disease in the towns and cities which were piled high with corpses.
He found spending time with her pleasant enough, but he continued to find that he had no romantic interest or sexual attraction towards her whatsoever.
This seemed odd, considering they had apparently been married, but perhaps that was the problem. Maybe they had been married too long and whatever spark they might once have had was gone. If that was the case, it seemed that even the honeymoon setting of the island wasn’t enough to rekindle it.
He could sense she was becoming frustrated at his lack of interest and had clearly been doing her utmost to get him in the mood, even serving up oysters the previous evening, washed down with copious amounts of wine.
How long could he continue to rebuff her advances before she lost patience with him? Should he just go through the motions and have sex with her just to get the monkey off his back? He couldn’t imagine he would enjoy it much. It would probably be the equivalent of a bored prostitute lying back and thinking of England with an unappetising client.
Then, after a week, something extremely unexpected occurred. Despite Vanessa’s attempts to convince him otherwise, Josh had resisted all suggestions that, as they were man and wife, they should share a room. It was therefore extremely surprising when he woke up on that seventh morning to discover that he wasn’t alone.
Considering that he and Vanessa were supposedly the last two people left on Earth, it was even more of a surprise to see a man standing in front of the French windows, his lurid Hawaiian shirt matching almost perfectly the scene beyond the window.
If he hadn’t lost his memory, Josh might have remarked that finally Henry was wearing one of his shirts in an appropriate setting, but in his amnesiac state, he didn’t even know who this man was.
“Hurry,” said the new arrival, “into the bathroom. And don’t speak, we haven’t much time.”
Josh immediately picked up that this mysterious stranger spoke in the same Australian accent as Vanessa. Curious, and more than a little apprehensive, he complied.
“Who are you?” he asked as soon as the bathroom door was closed. “And what are you doing here? I thought everyone was supposed to be dead.”
“Keep your voice down,” whispered Henry. “Vanessa’s got this whole place wired for sound and your room’s under constant surveillance. We can’t let her know I’m here.”
“If that’s the case, won’t she have see
n you come in?” asked Josh.
“She shouldn’t have,” said Henry. “I won’t show up on the cameras. Handy little device, this.”
He pulled the right-hand side of his shirt up, revealing a small electronic gadget attached to his belt.
“It neutralises all electronic surveillance devices,” he said. “It’s a little something the Australian government had me knock up for the secret service. I kept this one, you know, just in case I ever fancied robbing a bank or anything.”
“Very handy,” replied Josh.
“Unfortunately, you don’t have one, so that’s why you’ve got to keep quiet. She’s got cameras and microphones everywhere, even in here.”
“You mean she can watch me when I’m on the toilet?” asked Josh, feeling slightly grossed out.
“In theory,” replied Henry, “but I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Vanessa may be many things, but she’s not a pervert. And right at this moment, she’s in the shower, so we can talk freely but only for a few minutes.”
“OK, well, perhaps you’d better start by telling me exactly who you are,” suggested Josh.
“Henry Jones, at your service,” he replied, stretching out a hand for Josh to shake. But Josh didn’t reciprocate.
“Henry Jones?” he exclaimed. “The mass murderer who released the virus that killed all of humankind?”
“Ha ha,” chuckled Henry, “is that what she told you? I’ve got to hand it to her, she knows how to spin a good yarn. Mind you, she’s so deranged she’s probably even convinced herself it’s true. No. I’m afraid I’m not the monster she’s made me out to be.”
“What is the truth, then?” asked Josh, feeling bewildered by this whole experience. He hated the fact that he had lost his memory, and now it seemed there were two different people giving him two different versions of events.
“Vanessa was responsible for both the creation and the release of the virus,” said Henry. “She was madly and obsessively in love with you and when it went unrequited, she started killing people to get to you – including me, as it happens.”