Sleepless

by Louise Mumford

  Chapter 55

  They found themselves in the rotting corpse of a gift shop.

  Ing Enterprises hadn’t bothered to clear the old place out. As Thea’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she made out display cabinets and shelves still full of the souvenirs that sightseers would have snapped up to gift to unsuspecting relatives who would, in turn, donate them to charity as soon as they could. A row of cuddly monks grinned at her, dust cataracts dimming their eyes.

  Rory slammed the door shut and Rosie sank to the ground.

  The windows were grimy, but Thea tried to peer through, scanning what she could see of the sky.

  ‘Do you think it’ll be able to see anything through those windows?’ Thea cast around for somewhere to hide.

  ‘It won’t need to if it’s got thermal vision,’ Rory said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Heat detector spots the heat from our bodies – but it might not be able to do that through these walls.’

  They quickly checked the windows didn’t open, piled anything heavy in front of the door and then they pressed themselves against the walls on either side of a window, Rosie slumped under the sill.

  Drones. To Thea, drones were wobbly, whirring things that children flew in the park, an upgrade on the old toy helicopter. Or they would one day deliver parcels, though no one was very clear when that day would come. The ones she’d read about and seen, they would not help blow up a building; they would not hunt and track and use horrible little sensors on their horrible whirring bodies to hunt down three people who only wanted to get off an island.

  Thea was breathing too hard.

  She tried to think of something else. And there she was. Back on the green but it was daylight, a bright winter day with just enough sun to keep the chill at bay if you wrapped up warm. There was the smell of the grass and Rosie’s chatter, and they had their lunch spread out before them, sorted into piles of “healthy”, “too healthy” and “too healthy to actually eat”. Then there was Rory with his chocolate, his stolen contraband, and in that freeze-frame of sun and with the sugary sweetness starting to melt on her tongue, in that moment, though she hadn’t realized it at the time, she’d been happy. She’d fit in.

  ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ Rosie’s face was pale and big-eyed, her swelling and bruising still vivid blues and greens, the dingy bandage hiding the worst of it.

  Thea couldn’t get her mouth to open to offer any comforting words; the signal between it and her brain had fritzed.

  ‘I saw a programme about field mice during a harvest,’ Rosie continued, dreamily. ‘The harvester comes, churning up all the wheat, cutting it down, rolling over it and the field mice they run, and they run but they can only get so far. In the end they have nowhere left to run. The harvester gets them. Chopped-up little field mice.’

  Rosie’s voice took on a faraway quality, as if she wasn’t really talking to anyone, only herself. When she’d been little, Thea had read a book about a field mouse family who had escaped the spinning blades of the harvester, despite one of the little baby mice being ill and unable to move. She couldn’t remember now how they’d done it. But she wanted to tell Rosie about it, about how the mice could escape, after all.

  ‘That’s us, isn’t it?’ Rosie continued. ‘We’re chopped-up little field mice. We just haven’t quite got to the end of the field.’

  She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

  ‘Rosie, keep your eyes open,’ Rory whispered, bending to nudge her shoulder.

  ‘Why? I’m tired.’

  Thea wanted to sink down with her. Her eyes had begun to throb, holding the beat of a miserable tune that only they could sense. The floating black shapes in front of them melted into the general gloom, which was worse because now the whole place pulsed and squirmed as if she’d got herself stuck in a very dark lava lamp. She blinked a few times, her eyelids almost sticking together each time she did so.

  One of the blinks went on longer than she’d meant it to. With a jolt, she bobbed her head up again.

  Blink.

  Blink.

  Bli—

  Pain shot through her hand. She’d stabbed herself in the palm with the scissors she’d been carrying in her pocket. Keeping the point embedded she wiggled it slightly, feeling the pain needle, a white-hot focus for her mind.

  Just as she was thinking perhaps they had been wrong, perhaps the drone hadn’t spotted them after all, that it had just turned in their direction on its own special, drone business – just as she was allowing herself to think of getting to Delores’s boat … something scratched the wall directly behind her.

  Thea and Rory tensed.

  A bumping, skittery scratch, like a drunken bumblebee careening away from its flower of choice. A questing, snouty little scratch.

  Bump, scrape. Bump, scratch.

  It came again.

  Bump, rasp.

  Then, lazily, it made its way along the wall until it knocked and buzzed against the window in the middle of them.

  A light flashed in.

  Chapter 56

  She tried to steady herself using the meditation techniques she’d derided so often in her first few weeks on the island.

  One long breath in … and hold it … one long breath out …

  The light came from the window between them. It was methodical, the way in which it tracked across the room, starting at the corner furthest from them and meticulously making its way along the floor, no patch escaping its beam.

  Eventually it would track its slow careful way right over to them.

  Thea nearly forgot to take the in-breath.

  Rosie’s one good eye was huge in the gloom as she turned her face a little towards Thea. Her hands were pressed up against the wall behind her as if she was holding it back from collapsing and she made a strangled gasping noise. Thea tried to look reassuring, but she wasn’t sure that translated well in the dim light.

  The snouty, questing scratch had turned into a snouty, questing light.

  One long breath in … and hold it … one long breath out … and hold it …

  Rosie’s mouth stretched wide in fear.

  The torchlight beam focused on the far corner, a tea towel with a print of a saint patting a cow suddenly bright in the spotlight, the cow’s face looking almost shocked by the illumination. Then the light slowly crept over display shelves, badges, rows of crucifixes and the line of cuddly toy monks with their stitched smiles.

  It paused.

  Thea couldn’t see what had caught its attention. In her imagination she saw dusty footprints and long sweeping curves in the dirt where they’d moved furniture. Sweat pricked out on her temples. Had they kicked over their tracks?

  If they hadn’t, a siren would soon sound, flashing red lights would swirl over them, and a team of heavily armed guards would burst through the door—

  The light moved on.

  One long breath out …

  How long did a drone battery last? Thea had absolutely no clue. But it couldn’t last forever. That one must have used up a lot of its power playing its part in the explosion. All they had to do was wait it out. At some point it would have to go back to its … hive, or whatever, and they could make a break for it. Unless they just sent new ones. Thea told herself not to think about new drones with freshly charged batteries.

  ‘Thea!’ Rory hissed and pointed at Rosie who was shaking. No, not shaking, she was in the middle of a fit: hard, jerking shakes made her body twitch until she slipped down into a heap onto her side. Thea’s heart lurched.

  ‘Can it hear us?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rory said, his voice low, ‘but we’ve got to keep her still!’

  The tracking light continued its orderly search of the room, each slow arc taking it just a little nearer to where they crouched.

  Thea immediately knelt next to Rosie, not sure what to do, not needing a scissor stab to keep her awake anymore. A weak humming sound came from Rosie’s frot
h-flecked lips. There was something she should be doing, Thea was sure, but all she remembered was that someone in a fit could swallow their tongue, or bite it off, and she tried to keep Rosie on her side.

  ‘What’s happening to her?’ Thea’s voice shook and she turned to Rory who frowned.

  In the gloom, Rosie’s face became Ethan’s and Thea was instantly back at the lighthouse. She could feel the rough carpet under her hands. That moment when she’d known that she’d been wrong to trust Kyle, the moment she’d reached out to knock the headphones away, and Ethan’s eyes turned from panicked but still his – recognisably Ethan’s – to … nothing. No one’s. Another person she hadn’t known how to save.

  ‘What do we do?’ She looked to Rory.

  The light completed another arc and swung closer.

  Thea tried to work out angles. They were under the window, through which the beam of light shone. Surely it wouldn’t be able to scan the small space directly under it; surely it would have to stop? Thea noted with relief that no other window provided it with a better view.

  ‘We’re going to have to keep as close to the wall as we can,’ Rory whispered.

  Rosie continued to shudder and jerk as the smooth swinging light kept on its path ever nearer to them. It almost hypnotized Thea. She couldn’t keep her eyes from it, a frightened field mouse in the gloom. It inched closer.

  And closer still.

  Holding Rosie proved difficult, so in the end Rory pushed her feet down and Thea took her by the shoulders, her head on her lap, all three of them squashed so tightly against the wall, Thea could smell the mould covering it.

  The light crept nearer, skimming over the floor an inch or so away from them.

  Thea had never held herself this still in all her life, her heart loud in her ears and her muscles straining.

  The light lazily trailed closer to them, so leisurely that Thea was sure it had slowed down on purpose.

  It trailed an inch past Thea, then worked its way, so agonizingly close, past Rosie’s shoulders, her hips, legs, knees …

  It stopped.

  Some dogs, when they hunted, froze to something called a point while they sniffed out whatever game they were tracking, Thea thought wildly. That’s what the light was doing. It was trying to sniff them out.

  But her thoughts were interrupted when Rosie suddenly arched her back, kicking her feet hard and Thea jolted with her, seeing it almost in slow motion as the light started moving again and Rory’s hand was kicked away. He went reeling backwards and Rosie’s trainer flailed out.

  Heading straight into the beam’s tracking light.

  It was fitting, Thea decided in a strange, floaty way, as if she was no longer a part of the room but a ghost hovering above it, looking down on them. It was fitting that a scuffed and soggy trainer would be the thing to get them caught; after all, it was what had got them all into this in the first place, her asking: ‘Please, miss? May I have some shoes?’

  The light moved closer to Rosie’s trainer and the floaty feeling disappeared as Thea slammed back into the room and almost scrambled over her, trying to reach her foot. She imagined the light creeping across the laces and the wall behind them being laser-beamed into smithereens as they were all killed in a blaze of heat and a shower of cuddly monk stuffing.

  The light was nearly at the sole of Rosie’s shoe.

  Thea stretched until her sore shoulder felt ready to pop, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to reach her foot in time and could only watch helplessly as the light crept closer and closer and closer …

  But then, with a grunt, Rory heaved himself up and threw himself forward, his fingers grasping on to the padded tongue of Rosie’s trainer, dragging it back with a second to spare as the light washed past them, cool and white.

  They cowered in the shadows.

  One long breath in … and hold the breath …

  Dust flitted in the beam of light as it reached the end of its arc and halted.

  Then it blinked out.

  Chapter 57

  Almost as soon as the light went out and the scratching stopped, Rosie flopped into a horrible stillness.

  Blood seeped from her nose.

  Thea gathered her up and stroked the hair away from her face. ‘Rory?’

  He put his finger to his lips again and carefully peered out of the window.

  ‘I think it’s gone—’ he began but stopped when he turned and saw Rosie’s limp body.

  Rory’s expression as he unclipped and unwound the padding told Thea all she needed to know. She could only manage one glance at the seeping, raw-meat mess of Rosie’s eye before she had to turn away, but she couldn’t escape the smell. Rosie shivered, a sick heat coming from her.

  ‘We shouldn’t have moved her,’ he said, slumping next to them, his head in his hands.

  ‘What do we do?’ Thea gripped his arm.

  So far, there had always been something to do, hadn’t there? Run, hide, hit … kill. And she’d done it.

  There had to be something. Rory hung his head.

  ‘Rosie?’ she said gently. She thought that maybe Rosie’s eyelids flickered, but in the shadows it was hard to tell. She murmured something incoherent and new blood seeped from her nose. Thea held on tighter.

  Something squeezed at Thea’s throat, making her light-headed.

  What happened next did not happen quickly, nor was it peaceful.

  ‘We should get help!’

  But there was no help to get, no one left but the two of them, kneeling in the dust.

  Sometimes, Rosie knew what was happening, and they were the worst times. A hand like a claw, a rasping voice that tried for words but ended in a whimper.

  ‘It will be okay,’ Thea soothed over and over, that word, okay, said so many times that it bruised and softened until it tasted rotten in her mouth.

  Thea held her the whole time.

  She gave up on words. Instead, she just lay down next to Rosie and put her head close to hers, holding her hand and kissing her cheek, letting her know someone was there with her, even though it was dark, and where Rosie was going was darker still.

  Eventually, words stopped and only breathing was left.

  At some point, Thea moved to rest her head on Rosie’s chest, listening to her weak, jumpy heartbeat.

  She stayed that way for what felt like a very long time, each beat heard a relief, a rhythm and a song with only one lyric, a plea: ‘Keep beating.’

  Until it stopped.

  She’d held Rosie the entire time, but death is a letting go and, after what could have been hours, could have been days, finally, there was no other choice …

  Thea let go.

  She didn’t want to lift her head and see Rosie’s face, still and slack, but she did because that’s what the living have to do – those who survive, they have to look at death again and again, stare it in the face and then try to remember why they keep going.

  There was still a little hand-drawn heart around one disc on Rosie’s temple.

  Words and thoughts and tears would come later. All of her grief, hot and tumbling, would pour out.

  But not yet.

  Thea clamped her hands over her mouth as her vision blurred. She squeezed them tight because if she let go she wasn’t sure what was going to come out of her mouth, some unholy howl that would break her eggshell-thin body.

  Thea half waited for the production team to call “cut” and the scene to be dismantled, chunks of set rolled away, the gift shop opening up like a doll’s house. Rosie would be helped up, laughing with the crew and brushing dust from her hair. Someone would pass them coffees and give them thick coats and fur-lined boots to wear while they waited for the crew to reset.

  She sat in the silent dark.

  Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she concentrated on the patterns in the dust on the floor as if there might be an important message in there, one that would only be revealed when she stared hard enough.

  ‘In the lighthouse,’ – Rory’
s voice seemed to come from very far away even though he was right next to her – ‘I didn’t know what would happen to Ethan, but, so you know, even if I had, I would have tried to save you first.’

  Thea closed her eyes, watched the colours pulse on the edges of the blackness. Her hand found Rory’s, at first her palm lightly on top of his until their fingers intertwined. She put her head on his shoulder and he shifted to take the weight, her head fitting neatly into the side of his neck where his heartbeat pulsed. She needed to hear it thump.

  ‘I couldn’t think of him,’ Rory said quietly. ‘All I could think about was you.’

  He slumped next to her and hearing his breathing, when Rosie’s had stilled forever, was a torment and a comfort at the same time.

  Thea needed a drink, something so alcoholic that one sniff would be enough to numb her and block out thought. Her head pounded and she was so empty that if someone tapped her the sound would echo. But the problem with emptiness was that it could be filled – and Thea knew what was waiting to rush in if she let it. She continued to stare at the dust.

  Even though they would probably be killed before they found the boat, even though the boat itself could then be tracked easily enough, even though the chance of escape from all this was laughable … she was going to try.

  For Rosie.

  She was a tiny cog in a big mechanism, but sometimes tiny cogs could make a difference, couldn’t they? A small wrong move from one of them could wreck the whole damn machine.

  Chapter 58

  Vivian stood on the clifftop, lighthouse-bright with the sheer force of her rage.

  It was morning. She cursed the waves below her, stupid frothy things that were to blame because they had gnawed at the land in the first place and eventually chewed off that chunk of island. She cursed the island for not having more staying power, for not clinging on to the mainland with all of its might – for allowing itself to be eaten away.