Sleepless

by Louise Mumford

  She’d been expecting him to crumple and fall, immediately felled like the bad guys in a PG-rated film.

  He did not.

  He staggered, touching his face where the cheekbone had shattered, disbelief in his eyes. Then he lunged, swinging wildly because there was blood in one eye but barrelling towards her with surprising strength too. It was instinct, to close her eyes and drive the axe down once more, into something that snagged the axe blade and then nearly pulled her down with it.

  She opened her eyes.

  Kyle lay motionless on the floor.

  Thea breathed hard, gulped in air, her face wet with what she first thought was blood, but what surprisingly turned out to be tears. Her knees seemed to dissolve and her legs gave out, sending her sprawling onto the floor, still clutching the handle of the axe. Vomit burned in her throat and she put out a hand to support herself.

  It slipped in some sort of thick fluid.

  Rory crawled towards her and reached out, big-eyed and pale.

  Rory.

  Her breath hitched.

  She turned to him, tightened her grip on the axe handle and tugged at it, her face turned away, until it slid free. Rory, reading her expression, started to scurry backwards, but not quick enough …

  She swung the blunt handle of the axe right into his soft, fleshy middle.

  He bent double, making a weak “oof” sound.

  She hauled herself up, feeling every joint scream at her as she did so, then she turned back to the doors, her chin high, the axe clutched in both hands, not thinking because thinking would lead to feeling and she couldn’t feel anything right now. If she did, she would just crumple—

  ‘Wait!’ Rory gasped.

  She shoved one of the doors open.

  ‘Please … wait!’

  Her footsteps were muffled by the cushioned hi-tech floor material, but she knew her steps were confident and determined as she left the room. She wasn’t going to speak to him. She didn’t know how much of a part he’d played in all of this and she was tired of being lied to, tired of having to try and work out the real motive behind what everyone was saying and doing.

  Just tired.

  ‘Wait!’ he called again. ‘Don’t you want to know about Rosie?’

  She slowed, just a little, the name tangling her steps.

  ‘Rosie’s safe!’ he continued. ‘I managed to keep her safe! She’s still alive!’

  Chapter 53

  ‘Do you have any idea? Any fucking idea, Rory Thirwood?’ Thea marched back along the corridor to him, eyes blazing, raising the axe in front of her, gesticulating with it. ‘I saw you sit back and watch Kyle kill Ethan. I watched him die! And Delores. And Moses. I’ve seen those bodies in there. And do you know what? I am sick of it. Of watching. I’m not watching anymore. This is it. I don’t trust you. I think I might even want to use this axe on you and if you are lying right now about Rosie, if this is yet another elaborate trap you’re setting for me, I swear to God I will take this axe and I will ram it right between your eyes.’

  She marched up close to him, her chest heaving.

  ‘I know,’ Rory said meekly. ‘I know what you saw. I’ve seen a lot too.’

  She didn’t drop the axe.

  ‘I didn’t know what would happen to Ethan.’ Rory stretched out his hands to her, supplicating. ‘You have to believe me! I would never …’

  Belief. She’d asked that of him, days ago when the two of them had whispered together in a cleaning cupboard. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ And he had.

  Rory dropped his gaze. ‘I thought we were rescuing you …’

  This was Rory.

  He rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Please. Delores told me I had to go and get you, keep you safe from Aspire. I had no idea what would happen to Ethan, or what they’d done to the clients. I …’

  Thea swayed on her feet, her eyelids getting heavier with every blink.

  ‘I swear to you I am not lying about Rosie,’ he continued. ‘She’s hidden. I hid her in the Client Bubble, the damaged one, as soon as the chaos started, to keep her safe. I guessed no one would go back there. Thought I’d get her out with me, but before I could do that Delores ordered me up to the lighthouse to fetch you. But Rosie’s there. She’s awake.’

  ‘Awake?’ Thea snapped back into the room.

  ‘Yeah. A bit groggy. Can’t move much. But awake. I was getting supplies from the canteen here’ – he showed her the rucksack over his shoulder; it was full of nut bars and fruit – ‘when I came into that room and saw what they’d done … to the clients. I didn’t know before, I swear I didn’t. And then I heard someone running and … there you were.’

  Thea glanced at the door at the end of the corridor. ‘In there, they’re all …’

  ‘I know,’ he said softly and then paused. ‘We were told that the clients had been evacuated – you have to believe me on that. We would never …’

  There it was again. Belief. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

  Did she?

  He trailed off. In the short time since she’d seen him last, it was as if his face had sunken in on itself.

  Thea lowered the axe.

  Thea had never been much of a hugger, but when she saw Rosie propped up in bed in a client room, her face still a mess of bruising, blood and bandages, but smiling, a wicked glint in her working eye – she was in the hug before she realized. And then she was crying, and Rosie was crying too until they couldn’t even understand each other because all they could make were incoherent sounds, hitching gulps and sobs.

  For Thea, every cry was the loosening of something hard and knotted up inside her. It was something that had been twisting itself tight ever since she had seen Ethan die, so tight it had kept the rest of her together like an overstretched ball of rubber bands, liable to snap at any time.

  Eventually they quietened and Thea sat back on the bed, holding Rosie’s hand.

  ‘But – important question’ – Rosie sniffed and smiled weakly – ‘how’s my hair?’

  Thea considered the tangle of fluff, wild at the front and flat at the back where Rosie had been lying on it.

  ‘Best ever.’ Thea returned the smile, but it faded quickly. ‘You know, that day at the monastery, I thought you were … that I wouldn’t …’

  Rosie squeezed Thea’s hand, her own so much bonier than it had been. ‘I know.’

  She shifted herself on the bed and Rory came over, adjusting the pillows behind her so she could sit up more.

  ‘It’s all gone to hell, Thea.’ Rosie’s voice slurred a little. ‘Rory’s filled me in a bit.’

  Thea tried to keep her own voice steady. ‘Everyone who took part in the trial is dead. Ing Enterprises isn’t in charge anymore; possibly it never was. A company called Aspire owns it all and the trial went wrong – the hallucinations – but not just that. After the hallucinations there is just this … this blankness. The person becomes a living, breathing shell. So, they’ve covered their tracks. Killed them all.’

  Rosie took a breath, as if she’d just dipped her feet into cold water.

  ‘You know they were all pretty much alone?’ This Thea aimed at Rory. ‘No family, no friends nearby, no one to make a fuss?’

  He dipped his gaze away again.

  Thea clasped Rosie’s hand in both of hers. ‘Has Rory told you about Ethan?’

  Rory interrupted, ‘She maybe doesn’t need to—’

  ‘Ethan’s dead.’ She flicked her gaze to Rory before saying the next part. ‘They killed him too.’

  There was no better way of saying it. However you arranged the words or however soft the tone – they still sliced. Rosie looked bloodless.

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  Thea held her hand tight, hoping that would hold her together.

  ‘But they can’t all be … And Ethan was so …’ Rosie looked at Thea and what she saw in her eyes made her own harden. ‘Then … we’re the only ones left?’

  Thea considered them: a man, one inj
ured woman and another one with an axe. It sounded like the start of a bad joke.

  ‘There might still be a way out. Delores had a boat hidden for herself, and for me. We could still use it. We’ve just got to get to the beach.’

  ‘Delores is going to help us?’ Rosie said hopefully.

  ‘No, she’s dead too. There’s no one to help us. We’re going to have to help ourselves.’

  Rory cleared his throat. ‘Why would Delores tell you about this boat?’

  The suspicion in his voice made her chest burn. She’d put the axe down beside Rosie’s bed, but suddenly her fingers itched for it.

  ‘White-crowned sparrow, remember? Use Morpheus to completely get rid of the need for sleep. I was to be her star guinea pig. Couldn’t let the guinea pig die here, could she? Like the others …’

  She may as well have had the axe then, because she saw him flinch. Ethan.

  ‘Well, we’ve got to get to this boat, then.’ Rosie tried to push herself up even more.

  Rory clasped and unclasped his hands. ‘I don’t know, you’ve only just woken up from a serious head injury—’

  ‘She’ll be fine – we’ll help her,’ Thea snapped at him. They were on either side of Rosie’s bed and Thea put a hand on Rosie’s shoulder.

  Rory gave an exasperated sigh.

  Rosie looked from one to the other, stuck in her bed in the middle of them both.

  ‘So you want to stay here like sitting ducks and just wait for Kyle to find you—’ Thea began.

  ‘Kyle won’t be finding anyone. You took care of that!’

  It was her turn to flinch. Thea opened her mouth to reply but found there were no words. There were images though, and sounds too, ones she would never be able to forget.

  She abruptly sat down.

  Kyle was dead. She had killed him. He would have killed her, and he had actually killed Richard and there were all the reasons and excuses in the world but, strip all of that away and she was left with that small, bleak sentence. She had killed him. Was she the same as them now, the ones who had dragged bodies into that room at the end of the corridor?

  Rosie interrupted her thoughts in a small voice: ‘Thea? Please don’t leave me behind.’

  And there it was. The need. Somehow, on this island, in these days, she had become the person people needed – to agree, to act, to help, to forgive. Such a lot that they expected her to do, little weights pulling on her eyelids.

  She turned to Rory. ‘I’m sorry. Look, I don’t know what to do, okay? But we’re still alive. We’ve just got to keep making the next decision that keeps us alive a little bit longer, and then the next, and the next until we get off this island.’

  Rory nodded. She’d got this far – somehow – but now it wasn’t about just her anymore. It was about the three of them. Three people to keep safe. It seemed like such a huge number.

  ‘Get Rosie up and out of bed. Find something warm for us all to wear. Boots if possible – there’s snow.’

  But, even to her ears, her voice sounded drunken, and suddenly she smelled the patchouli joss-sticks her mother always had burning in her house. In fact, there was her mother, sitting on the end of Rosie’s bed, with her glasses perched on the edge of her nose reading a newspaper as a teapot poured tea all by itself—

  ‘Thea?’

  She woke with a start, Rory’s hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t let me do that again!’ She sprang up and paced to the cupboards, searching through an abandoned cosmetic bag left on the bedside table. ‘It’s been so long since I slept. But I can’t sleep – I might hallucinate!’

  Unspoken between them was the thought, and after the hallucinating, what would happen to her next?

  ‘What will you do?’ Rosie asked, her eyes much bigger than her voice.

  Thea smiled grimly as she picked up a pair of nail scissors. When she’d hugged Rosie, those knots deep within her had loosened, but now they tugged and tightened once more.

  ‘Stay awake,’ she said, testing the points against her palm, ready to stab the ends into herself the very next moment she felt herself drift.

  That was when the first explosion came.

  Chapter 54

  Running, again.

  Heart-thumping, throat-closing, hand-shaking – again, again, again.

  To Thea it seemed she was always running in this nightmare place and never getting anywhere; even when she made it out as far as the lighthouse with Ethan she was flicked back to the Centre again: a counter in a hellish game of tiddlywinks.

  There was a deep booming that reverberated in her chest, and the feeling of something pressing down on them, squeezing the floor and making it tremble.

  ‘What is that?’ Thea shouted to Rory.

  Between them, they supported Rosie.

  ‘Clean-up’s started!’ he yelled back.

  Scorched-earth policy had never been so true, Thea thought grimly as she tightened her grip across Rosie’s shoulders.

  They hadn’t even had time to get boots. After the first explosion they had got Rosie out of bed and run from the room, heading back to the damaged cafeteria that Rory had led her through only about half an hour ago on the way to where he’d hidden Rosie.

  It was the dark twin of the other sphere. The original fire had started somewhere near here and there were black smudges on the stainless steel and white walls. Surfaces had warped, and the sticky gloss that had so unnerved Thea was charred to an acrid toffee. However, now there was new damage from the recent explosions. The chairs and tables, which had been neatly arranged, were upended and had a fine layer of dirt on them, whilst the floor was littered with chunks of stone and a few bits of metal. Thea warily eyed the walkways above them.

  This Client Bubble was where it had all started to go wrong. Thea remembered Rory telling her about the man who’d hallucinated that his teeth were falling out, and she imagined once again his bloody smile, the rattle of enamel in the palm of his hand.

  Another boom made the floor undulate again and it was a sound that Thea felt in her body, deep in her rib cage. All three of them cringed, trying to keep moving when all they really wanted to do was hide.

  Above them, the suspended walkways groaned.

  Thea and Rory glanced at each other.

  Then there was the terrible sound of tearing metal: the kind of thick, solid metal that should never tear. A walkway juddered as if a giant was jumping on it, shuddering violently until one of its welded joints split into ragged teeth, one end swinging down and spraying brittle chaos onto the floor below.

  ‘Run!’

  Thea didn’t look up again. She looked ahead, her path to the door suddenly a computer game obstacle course of chair legs and falling danger.

  She felt Rosie stumble and though she tried to keep a grip on her she couldn’t stop her from pitching forward, all three of them tumbling into a heap on the floor.

  Despite the heat coming from somewhere, Rosie was pale and her lips mauve. A spreading blot of dark red was already beginning to bloom on the bandage covering her eye.

  A crisscrossed square the size of a coffee table thudded into the floor about a metre away from Thea where it stuck, point deep. She whimpered and tugged at Rosie who planted her hands flat on the floor and tried to push herself up.

  ‘Rosie!’ Rory shouted, grabbing her under both armpits and hauling her up.

  It was only a computer game, Thea told herself. One where, if a massive chunk of scorching walkway fell on her she would simply blip out on the screen and reappear safe and well back at the start. Dodge that chair leg, keep that grip on Rosie, jump that sizzling lump.

  Then there was white. Snow.

  Cold air hit her.

  They were out and on their way to the green where they’d spent hours doing yoga and eating their lunches. Behind them, the Sleep Centre burned against a dimming, late afternoon sky. Had it really been only that morning that Thea had been dragged away from Ethan’s body? The previously undamaged Staff Bubble was now ablaz
e, the top curve of the golf ball completely caved in and the rest of it starting to warp and twist like melting marzipan. Thea, Rory and Rosie picked their way through smouldering debris and headed for the copse of trees on the way to the shore.

  The three of them swerved a ruined bedstead that hissed in the snow, the heat searing Thea’s back.

  ‘Please,’ Rosie gasped, her legs crumpling.

  ‘No! We have to keep going.’ Rory yanked her up, her feet now dragging between them, leaving trails in the snow.

  Tramlines, Thea thought. Like in that corridor.

  She wished she could stop and look back at the building, just take a moment to watch it crumble and fall, fully take in each pop as the windows shattered, each bit of cladding a piece of skin peeling away.

  Rosie drooped between them, a toy with her stuffing pulled out.

  ‘What are they – up there? Do you see them?’ Thea twisted to gaze into the sky, pointing up at the shapes she could see.

  They looked like birds from a distance, dark, thin shapes hovering in the sky. But they weren’t, Thea realized with mounting terror. Birds didn’t hover over a burning building, they got the hell out of there before their wings singed and they plummeted to their death.

  ‘They’re not birds, are they?’ She turned to Rory who had paled, despite the effort of dragging Rosie around.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘they’re not. They’re drones.’

  ‘Wait … they blew up the Centre by drone? Bombs are heavy, aren’t they?’ Thea frowned. ‘How can a little drone like that carry a bomb?’

  ‘I don’t think they can.’ Rory hurried her along, panting. ‘I think they’re just recording the demolition …’

  Thea kept an eye on the sky. ‘Do you think they can see us?’ she said nervously.

  ‘Well, they will if we keep chatting out in the open like we’re having a bloody picnic. Move it!’

  The old gift shop was nearest and, without needing to decide it amongst themselves, they ran for it. Thea half expected they would have to shoulder the door open, but the handle gave way without a fight and they skidded into the musty black, just as Thea was sure she saw one dark, bird-like shape angle itself away from the others and come straight for them.