Savage Island

by Bryony Pearce

  I tried to smile, but it pulled my face painfully. I let it drop. “Could’ve been worse.”

  “Yeah.” Grady fell silent. Then he spoke again. “Can you believe what Carmen did?”

  I shook my head slowly. The last of the adrenalin was draining from my body and I was craving sleep.

  “Maybe we never really know anyone,” Grady added.

  “You might’ve done the same.” I looked at him.

  “Maybe.”

  Will looked up at me. “We have a problem. There’s a door here, but it’s locked, and there’s a chute in it.” For the first time he sounded genuinely worried. “This is bad.”

  “Huh?” My head was hurting too much to allow me to think. Grady helped me down the last step and I leaned on the wall beside the door.

  Will pointed at the hatch. “I can only assume that this is where we have to deliver our geocaches.”

  “You mean the door won’t open until we put body parts inside the chute?” Grady gaped.

  “We’re trapped?” Lizzie said faintly.

  Grady started to hammer on the door. “Hey! Let us in.”

  Lizzie joined him. “We need help. Please, let us in!” She put her whole body into it. Bashing, not just with her fists but her whole arms. “We have injured!”

  Carmen just stood still. Grief rolled from her.

  Will and I looked at one another.

  “The door’s not going to open like that,” Will said, and I nodded.

  Finally, Lizzie turned, defeated. “W-what body parts did we need?”

  “Tooth, finger, ear, hand, probably eye.” I listed them tonelessly, barely noticing that my nose was clearing and I was managing to speak more easily.

  “Or equivalent,” Will reminded me.

  “Yeah.” I scratched at the blood dried on my hands, only then noticing I was still holding the axe. I let the weapon thud to the floor.

  “Do you think there’s someone on the other side?” Grady asked. “To check what goes through?”

  Will shrugged. “It’s possible. Maybe they have a scanner, like an airport X-ray scanner. Or it could be done by weight.”

  “There can’t be a person there,” Lizzie said confidently, “or they’d have let us in. So we just need to match the weight or … the shape of … things.”

  “We don’t have anything we can use, Lizzie.” I groaned. “We left our bags behind.”

  “We still have the fake finger, don’t we?” Lizzie looked at Grady. “You didn’t eat it, did you?”

  “Don’t be disgusting.” Grady felt in his pocket. “It’s still there.”

  “What else have we got?” Lizzie was moving now. “Empty your pockets.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Will warned.

  “It might,” Lizzie insisted. “It’s worth a try. If it’s only a machine back there, we can fool it. We did before, when you opened the fifth checkpoint without me.”

  We collected together a sad pile of detritus and laid it on the stairs: penknives, a bag of gummy bears, string, a tissue, a hairgrip, two chapsticks, a dead iPhone, a flat stone with a vein of quartz that had attracted Lizzie’s eye, a box of matches and a random credit card.

  “What’s that?” Grady pointed to Carmen’s jacket pocket.

  “Magic mushrooms,” I replied awkwardly, remembering how happy Car had been on them.

  “Let’s see.” Lizzie took the package from Carmen’s pocket. She grinned and held up a curled mushroom cap. “Eyeball.”

  Will bent and lifted Carmen’s foot; she was the only one still wearing her walking boots. “Knew it.” He poked the tread. I couldn’t see what he meant, but he picked up my axe and levered something out with the corner of the blade. Then he held up a piece of stone. “Tooth.”

  “What’s left?” Lizzie asked.

  I frowned. “Ear.”

  Grady cleared his throat and held up a piece of beef jerky.

  “I was saving it…”

  “Perfect.” Lizzie took it from him and tore it into a rough semicircle.

  As one we looked at Carmen, then let our eyes slide away.

  “Hand,” she whispered.

  My eyes went to my axe. There was a long silence.

  Lizzie broke the silence. “Or equivalent.”

  “Yeah, but what’s equivalent to a hand?” Grady frowned.

  “A foot?” Lizzie shrugged.

  “Forget it,” I snapped.

  Will snorted. “If we’re hoping this is a scanner or a set of scales, we just have to make one.” He pointed to the belay gloves still stuck in my belt. “We can stuff one of those.”

  “What with?” Lizzie took it from me. “Socks?”

  “It should be heavier than that.” I poked my toe at the pile of stuff in front of us, shifting it about.

  “We can use the two penknives for fingers.” Lizzie demonstrated by pulling the blade of each knife halfway out, so that she had made a V-shape, then sticking both sides into the fingers of the glove.

  “Socks should work for the palm.” Will pulled off his climbing shoes and then his socks, rolled them up, took the glove and tucked them in.

  The thumb hung limply.

  “It doesn’t look right.” Grady sniffed.

  “It’ll have to do.” I looked at Will. “Right?”

  He nodded.

  “Ready?” Lizzie picked up our collection.

  There was a loud knocking from the airlock at the top of the stairs and I held my breath, but nothing followed. They weren’t in yet.

  “Quick!” Carmen urged.

  We opened the chute and put our fake caches inside. Lizzie closed the chute.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please, please, pl—”

  There was more knocking from above us.

  “It didn’t work.” Grady groaned. “I knew it—”

  Suddenly there was a slight whirr and the hatch in the door slid back to reveal a thumb scanner. Grady cheered.

  “Go on, Lizzie.” Will pushed her. She wiped her sweating hand on her trousers, then pressed her thumb against the pad. My heart hammered.

  The door shuddered and then swung slightly open.

  My eyes widened, but I seemed to be rooted to the spot.

  “Breathe, Ben.” Will pushed the door the rest of the way.

  The first thing we did once we were inside was secure the door. It clicked closed with a final-sounding thud. Then we turned round to see where we had ended up.

  The fluorescent light was blinding after the dim stairwell. I rubbed my eyes, slowly becoming accustomed to the glare. Lizzie’s optimism must have infected me, because I did somehow expect to see a human figure melting out of the brightness.

  Her noise of disappointment was enough warning. When my vision adjusted and I saw the room was empty of anything living, I wasn’t surprised.

  The room itself wasn’t particularly big, perhaps three metres square, and it was totally white – white tiles beneath our feet, walls painted white. Even the ceiling was white – tiled like the floor, with lights set into the surface.

  On one wall, though, there were ten screens in two rows of five. Blank.

  I stared at them, expecting … something … but the only sound in the room was the buzz of the lighting, the rasp of our breathing and the tick-tick as blood dripped from my bleeding nose on to the tiled floor.

  “Easy clean,” Will murmured, his gaze drawn to the crimson splatters.

  I nodded and glanced behind him. Our pile of fake parts lay on top of a metal plate, below the end of the chute we had put them through. Will pressed his hand against the plate and it gave slightly.

  “Weight,” he said.

  “There was no need for anyone to get hurt,” Carmen whispered.

  I wasn’t sure if that made the whole thing more horrific, or less.

  Carmen sat down and then let her feet flop out in front of her as she leaned against the door, her eyes half-shut.

  Suddenly Grady whooped. “We got in, you guys. Don’t you
get it?”

  I blinked at him.

  He spun round in a happy circle. “We’re first here, and our geocaches have been accepted. We’ve won.”

  “We have?” I looked at Will. “I guess we have.”

  “A million pounds each!” Grady punched the air. “We’re millionaires. Those guys outside can suck it. It doesn’t matter about Carmen’s hand any more.”

  “Grady!” Lizzie snapped, horrified, as Carmen stared at him.

  “I mean … she’ll be fine. She doesn’t need to work if she doesn’t want to. She’ll be ok.”

  Lizzie licked her lips. “A million pounds! I can do it – pay off the mortgage. Mum can look after Dad without working. Dad won’t have to worry about us.” Her smile slowly died. “But … now what?” Lizzie walked towards the monitors. “We’re under the last checkpoint, so what do we do now? How do we get the money?”

  A tile depressed under her foot and with an explosion of colour, but no sound, the monitors flickered to life.

  “What is this?” Grady ran to her side. “Is it another puzzle?”

  I grabbed Will’s arm as he started forwards. “There isn’t going to be any money, is there?” I whispered.

  Will shrugged free and glided towards the screens, fascinated.

  “It’s the island.” Lizzie touched a screen with a trembling finger. “Look – there’s the chapel.”

  I staggered closer. She was right – the screen showed the graveyard. A team was moving among the stones – more girls than boys in the group – and one of them was being led by a rope. I felt vomit rising.

  Electronic text appeared on the bottom of the screen. Team 2: Lancett.

  I looked at another screen, then another. All seven checkpoints were represented. The other three screens were cycling through different points on the island. They seemed to activate when a team appeared: motion-sensitive.

  The first screen gave a view of the jetty. A team lounged around a campfire. I could almost hear their laughter. My hand drifted up towards the writing: Team 1: Sadana.

  “That could’ve been us,” I muttered.

  Wordlessly Grady pointed at the eighth screen, which revealed a rowan grove. At the bottom, the scrolling text said: Team 5: McCarthy. Team 6: Chase.

  The girl we had seen before, with a buzz cut and machete, was lying on a branch. Beneath her, creeping, with terror in his every movement, was a younger boy.

  “I can’t watch.” I covered the screen with my hand, grateful that there was no sound. I turned to see Will leaning close to screen seven, his nose almost touching the glass.

  “Will!”

  “It’s the beacon.” He poked the screen. “They’ve found the checkpoint box behind the panel, but they seem to be arguing. Maybe over the answer to the riddle? Or which team gets to use the thumb scanner, I don’t know.”

  “But … Curtis has to use the scanner. Reece is dead.” Lizzie nudged him to one side, so she could see.

  “They’ve dragged his body over there,” Will said matter-of-factly. “He still has his thumbs.”

  The writing beneath the image read Team 4: Wellington. Team 8: Armstrong.

  I turned from the screens and walked over to the opposite wall. I touched the seamless paintwork with a groan, then leaned against the cold plaster. “There’s no other way out of here. Just one door. End of the line. So now what? We just wait here for the other teams?”

  Carmen flinched.

  Will’s eyes narrowed at the tenth monitor. Then he went to the pile of fake parts and picked up the glove.

  “What are you doing?” Lizzie asked.

  “I need the Swiss army knife.” Will pulled the fake hand apart. Then he opened out the tin opener. “I want to get behind there.” He started to lever the monitor out of the wall. “If I can hack the feed, maybe we can send a message.”

  I jolted. “You can do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Will got his fingers behind one edge of the screen and pulled hard. It came free. He leaned it carefully on the floor to reveal a tangle of wires in the hole. “Watch me try.”

  After a while, Lizzie came to sit beside me. I took her hand and she curled her fingers around mine. I leaned my head on her shoulder.

  Grady remained by Will, looking over his shoulder and making the occasional comment.

  We watched as Will grew increasingly red-faced. The fifth monitor flickered and went blank, the picture on the second dissolved into hissing static. Will’s hands started to shake and eventually he threw the knife with a yell. It cracked the seventh screen, where Curtis’s and Reece’s teams were now shoving one another, a new fight beginning, and then thudded to the ground.

  “No luck at all?” I asked.

  “There’s a thicker wire.” Will gestured at a black cable that he had partly pulled out so that it protruded from the wall like a tongue. “But I don’t know what it does. It could be the main power source. If I cut it, we could lose the monitors, maybe the lights. It could open the main door and let the others in. I daren’t touch it.”

  “That’s it, then.” Lizzie’s hand twitched in mine and a tear slid down her cheek. “We’re at the end. No final puzzle to solve. No last clue. No one to help us … or t-tell us why.” She hesitated. “No prize money.”

  Will leaned against the wall next to me. Grady paced the room, frustration in his clenched fists. Finally, he too curled up with his head on his knees. “I thought we’d won,” he said.

  As Grady’s shoulders dropped, the monitors flickered and I looked up. They flickered again, then suddenly the remaining views of the island were replaced by a single huge face, looking down on us. There were two holes, one on the forehead and one on the cheek, where the screens Will had blanked showed nothing.

  I nudged Will.

  “It’s Gold.” Lizzie pulled her hand away from mine and got back up to her knees.

  “Congratulations, Elizabeth Bellamy and team. You have reached the final checkpoint and done so in the fastest time.” The accent was strong American, brash and loud.

  Grady leaped to his feet. “We get the money then, right?”

  “Shut up, Grady.” Lizzie rasped. She was shaking with rage. “Did you know?” She jabbed a finger at the screens. “Was it you?”

  The face frowned.

  “The checkpoints – did you know?” She surged to her feet. “Was it you who put … body parts in them? Was it?” She was flushed and her eyes flashed.

  Carmen looked up at this. She pushed her hair out of her face. Gold seemed to look only at her and then he cast his eyes over the rest of us before coming to rest on Lizzie once more.

  “Of course it wasn’t me.” The face smiled. “But … I did arrange to have it done.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Lizzie gasped and then there was silence. Even though Will had warned me, even though I had known deep down, I hadn’t believed. I had still been hoping for a happy ending: grown-ups who would pale in horror at our story, put foil blankets around our shoulders, tend our wounds and hand us hot chocolate before helping us to call home. I had been picturing a large, friendly nurse, or a pilot, impressed by our bravery. Not this matter-of-fact confession.

  My chest felt hollow. I got to my feet and pulled Lizzie back to my side, needing her warmth. She came unresistingly. Will still stood off by himself, scrutinizing the big screen.

  “But what was the point?” It was Grady. He clutched his hands to his chest. “Why do this?”

  “People died,” I said.

  Gold smiled. “I have a new hiring policy. I want ruthless – this way I get it.”

  I stared. Then I looked back at our fake geocache collection. “Joke’s on you,” I muttered.

  “Not at all,” Gold said with aching benevolence. “But you are right, Torben. As your team managed to circumvent the first part of the selection process, these interviews will require an additional element. So here it is: there is a considerable sum of money available – five million pounds to be exact – and, in
addition, an internship in the Gold Foundation, directly under me, matched with a top-flight education and, before you are twenty-five, a directorship of one of my businesses.” He winked. “This package will be available to the first of you to indicate you’d like to take me up on my offer by showing exactly how ruthless you are.”

  “What do you mean?” Lizzie asked faintly.

  “You know what I mean, young lady.” Gold tutted. “I would like one of you to kill another. Do this and the world will be yours. A guaranteed future and a lifestyle you could only dream of.”

  “B-but,” Grady stammered, “why?”

  Gold sighed and his eyes focused on the middle distance, perhaps on something at his end of the screen. “My hiring policy has always been to seek high achievers with low self-esteem – you can get a lot of work out of those people. But I don’t want to have those idiots running my businesses. I need leaders.” He looked back at us. “What I am seeking is the psychopathic personality. Intelligence, drive, ruthlessness, remorselessness, an ability to charm, to manipulate: all essential in today’s business environment. I want to get you young so I can mould you, and of course I want something on you, so you remain under my influence. A video of a murder committed when you were old enough to face trial as an adult – that would be most effective.

  ‘In a decade or two, I’ll be in control of global business enterprises run by the most intelligent and pitiless business people in the world. This isn’t the only Iron Teen contest running.” He grinned. “A new global power based on money and manipulation, with me at its head. I’ll be the one shaping the world.”

  Grady shuddered. “Whichever of us does it would be in the centre of every global conspiracy, like the Illuminati or the Freemasons.”

  “That’s right. Imagine the possibilities, talk it through. But don’t take too long.” He licked his lips. “Your team got through the assessments for one reason only.” He laughed.

  “What reason?” Lizzie yelled.

  Gold was silent.

  Lizzie ran from me and banged her fists on the monitors. “Tell us!”

  “Can’t you guess?” I asked quietly. Lizzie turned to look at me. “That assessment form with all the questions on it. Gold was looking for kids who fit his criteria.” I rubbed my eyes and flinched as my palm caught my swollen nose. “The competition wouldn’t be any good if there weren’t people on the island with psychopathic personalities, would it? I mean, look how fast the teams out there started cutting each other up!”